Softball Pitcher Shoots Dirt Into Own Catcher’s Eye in Astonishing Moment

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In a series of incredibly rare and unfortunate events, a college softball catcher got dirt in her eye after a clump of it was somehow hit in mid-air by her pitcher.

In the top of the ninth inning of Oregon’s Women’s College World Series game against Ole Miss on Friday, pitcher Lyndsey Grein threw a pitch in the strike zone to catcher Emma Cox. Immediately after catching the ball, Cox dropped to her knees and started favoring her eye. The ESPN announcers guessed that dirt had come off the ball and landed in her eye.

The announcers were close, but the reality was far more improbable.

Replays of the action revealed that the ball actually hit some dirt that was in the air. That clump of dirt came from Grein’s cleats just fractions of a second prior to her delivering the pitch.

Reflecting on the moment with a university reporter, Cox said she first thought the dirt came from her own glove.

“I thought it was dirt from my glove that must have hit me,” Cox said. “And I was like, OK, whatever. And then the umpire was like, no, it was a bug that flew into it and then the ball hit you, or the bug hit you in the face.”

Online, the incident drew countless comparisons to the infamous Randy Johnson bird play. During a spring training game in 2001, a bird flew into the line of fire right when Johnson threw his pitch. The result was a sudden explosion of feathers.