Liberty University professor dies after freak baseball accident

LYNCHBURG –– A Lynchburg College official says a Liberty University professor collapsed and later died after being hit by a baseball at one of the college's athletic fields.

The Lynchburg News & Advance reported that Lynchburg College Vice President John Eccles provided details of Tuesday's accident in an e-mail sent Wednesday to faculty, staff and students at the college.

Eccles said Jeff Taylor was hit in the lower jaw or neck by a line drive while pitching to a Lynchburg College baseball player, who wasn't identified.

Five players, including Taylor's son, were at the field at the time of accident.

The 44-year-old Taylor was an assistant professor of health sciences and kinesiology at Liberty.

Liberty Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said the school had lost "a great professor."

–– Associated Press

Almost this exact same thing happened to a classmate's dad when I was a kid playing little league.  He got hit by a foul ball, though.

Just for some relativity, when doing a paper and a presentation a while back on misleading statistics, the number of people killed a year by baseball is something like 87.  Dying from baseball turned out to be a much bigger risk than a toddler age 12 and younger dying from fooling around with mom or dad's gun.

RIP, dude.

Man that is horrible.  I wonder if the baseball damaged his jugular or carotid artery.  

Rest In Peace sir.

wow that is terrible to hear.    Its kind of scary too that I could have come that close to death when I was younger and was the pitcher in a baseball game.   I guess im lucky that the line drive hit me square on the nose and only broke it.

Living here in Lynchburg, from what I heard, it was his son that was hitting at the time.

Same thing I heard.  Solid line drive right off the bat during some informal practice.  One of the computer techs at my office is a 2nd cousin, apparently the ball hit him at/near the corner of the jaw.  They're going to run an autopsy to figure out exactly what went wrong.

RIP.  I hate to see anyone, particularly an upstanding productive citizen like him, go like that.

What, no outcry from the public to ban baseballs? After all, it's for the children!