BEAUMONT – A baseball mom is hoping to strikeout two defendants for injures her son suffered during a World Series elimination game.
Seeking up to $1 million in damages, Blanca Chavez filed suit against Comcast Spectacor (a Comcast subsidiary) and Nations Baseball Tournament Association on Oct. 19 in Jefferson County District Court.
According to the lawsuit, Chavez’s son was injured on June 28 during a World Series baseball game at the Ford Park Entertainment Complex in Beaumont.
Greenwood Prather
While running down the first base line, the minor stepped into a hole about 1-foot deep, causing him to fall. He required his coaches’ assistance to leave the field.
Prior to his at bat, a member of the opposing team had apparently stepped in the hole and fell while running through first base.
However, when the game resumed, “the umpires failed to warn the teams about the ground hole next to the first base bag,” the suit states.
Following her son’s injury, Chavez searched the park for ice for her son’s swollen knee. When she returned, she noticed the game had continued without the hole being filled, prompting her to immediately visit the umpire’s office to speak with Nations Baseball Director Morgan Walker.
When the game was almost over, two Spectacor staff members arrived to fill the hole with dirt, the suit states.
The minor suffered a torn ACL and required surgery. To this day, he continues to walk “with a painful limp,” the suit states.
Chavez believes there is no guarantee her son will ever walk normally again or play baseball at any level, “much less the elite level for which he was recruited to play,” the suit states.
She maintains the defendants had a duty to check the field for holes and fill them.
“Holes in a baseball field during a game present an unreasonable risk of harm,” the suit states. “It was foreseeable that a baseball player could suffer serious injury by running into a hole in the field.”
In addition to exemplary damages, Chavez is suing for her own mental anguish as a bystander, plus her son’s past and future medical expenses, pain, impairment and disfigurement.
She is represented by Houston attorney Kelly Greenwood Prather.
Judge Baylor Wortham, 136th District Court, has been assigned to the case.
Case No. D-202795