Chapman Hit By Line Drive

Ouch:

Cincinnati Reds closer Aroldis Chapman suffered fractures to bones in his nose and left eye while taking a line drive to the face Wednesday night.
Chapman was carted off the field and transported by ambulance to a hospital and would be kept overnight for observation, the Reds said on their Twitter account.
The Reds said Chapman was originally taken to Banner Del E. Webb Medical Center in Sun City, Ariz., where tests indicated the facial fractures. He was then transferred to Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, where he was to undergo further testing.
Reds manager Bryan Price said Chapman was conscious and talking as he was taken off the field during the game against the Kansas City Royals.
"Not good," Price said. "He left the field on a stretcher, took a line drive just above his left eye is what it looks like -- a contusion, a laceration, and certainly needs to be taken to the hospital and checked. We've got Tomas Vera, an assistant trainer, is going to be with him. And then we'll get our updates from there."
The hard-throwing left-hander was struck by Salvador Perez's hit with two outs in the sixth inning. The pitcher crumbled to the ground, face down and flailing his legs. The ball caromed into the third base dugout. Medical personnel, including Royals Dr. Vincent Key, rushed the field. Chapman's father was among the people to run onto the field immediately after he was struck.
Players from both teams huddled around the mound as the 26-year-old Cuban was being attended to and the stadium became silent. An ambulance's siren could be heard in background while Chapman was loaded onto the stretcher.
"I know this isn't uncommon as we would like it to be, but it was frightening, certainly frightening," Price said.
The game was then called with Kansas City leading 6-3.

Another famous fireballer also got hit in the face with a wicked line drive:

On May 7, 1957, during the first inning of a night game against the New York Yankees at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Score threw a low fastball to Gil McDougald with Jim Hegan catching. McDougald lined the pitch to the mound and struck Score in the face, breaking Score's facial bones and injuring his eye. McDougald, seeing Score hit by the baseball and then lying down and injured, ran immediately to the pitching mound instead of first base to help Score. McDougald reportedly vowed to retire if Score permanently lost his sight in one eye as a result of the accident. Score eventually recovered his 20/20 vision, though he missed the rest of the season.
He returned late in the 1958 season. Though many believe Score feared being hit by another batted ball, and thus changed his pitching motion, Score himself rejected that theory. Score would tell Cleveland sportswriter Terry Pluto (for The Curse of Rocky Colavito) that, in 1958, after pitching and winning a few games and feeling better than he'd felt in a long time, he tore a tendon in his arm while pitching on a damp night against the Washington Senators and sat out the rest of the season.
In 1959, he'd shifted his pitching motion in a bid to avoid another, similar injury. "The reason my motion changed," Score told Pluto, "was because I hurt my elbow, and I overcompensated for it and ended up with some bad habits." As a result of the changes Score made in his pitching delivery, his velocity dropped and he incurred further injuries. Score pitched the full 1959 season, going 9–11 with a 4.71 ERA and 147 strikeouts.
In the book "The Greatest Team Of All Time" (Bob Adams, Inc, publisher. 1994), Mickey Mantle picked Herb Score as the toughest American League left-handed pitcher he faced (before the injury). Yogi Berra picked Herb for his "Greatest Team Of All Time".

Eerily, when he came up, Chapman was compared to Score:

Scouting legend Art Stewart, who chiseled his first reports on stone tablets, upped the ante in describing Aroldis Chapman.
Stewart called the lanky Cuban the "best young left-handed arm I've seen since Herb Score," and in doing so crossed a bridge that spans 55 years, to Score's rookie season with the Indians. A few phenoms have come and gone since then.

 Hopefully, Chapman recovers fully, and we aren't talking in a few years about how this injury affected his career. That is one of the scariest things that can happen in baseball.  It is one of the main reasons given for opposition to aluminum bats in the big leagues.  Back in high school, one of the hardest balls I ever hit was headed right at the face of the opposing pitcher.  Luckily, I never hit the ball extremely hard, and he was able to duck out of the way.