(NEXSTAR) – This guy is really head over heels for baseball.
A fan at the 2021 Home Run Derby says he’s (mostly) OK after falling over a railing — and nearly landing on his head — in pursuit of a ball hit by Matt Olson of the Oakland Athletics.
“Olson hit a home run, and obviously, I want a ball,” explained Bennett Lloyd, the fan who fell over the railing at Denver’s Coors Field, in a statement to MLB.com following his fall on Monday. “Once I saw that it was coming in right over here, I started trying to get close. Once I got a little closer, I realized, ‘Oh, I’m going to go over.’ I just dove and tried to get the ball.”
In footage of the fall shared by MLB and the Oakland A’s, Lloyd can be seen extending his glove over a tunnel in the right-field stands before ultimately losing tipping over and flipping onto the ground. (The ordeal starts at around the 35-second mark in the clip below.)
Lloyd, a pitcher at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, later told FOX Sports he didn’t seriously hurt himself, but only “scraped up” his elbow. Worst of all, he says, he didn’t even get the ball.
“[I was] just trying to get the ball, but I never ended up getting it,” he said.
Pete Alonso of the New York Mets ultimately ended up winning his second consecutive Home Run Derby on Monday. Yesterday will be followed by the 2021 Major League All-Star Game on Wednesday.
