Thom and Welsh were talking about the danger of this happening. And alot of you probably thought they were overdoing it a bit.
My daughter was a pitcher for a summer softball team back in junior high. They had 4 pitchers on the team. One weekend they had 3 games on the schedule and had to make up 2 games that had gotten rained out in April. So they had 5 games to play starting on Friday.
The 3 other pitchers were all on vacation, so my daughter had to pitch all 5 games. So she pitches one game on Friday, 2 on Saturday, and 1 more on Sunday. She starts the 5th game and when they were up to bat, she comes over to me and her mom with tears in her eyes and says her arm is hurting and she is tired of pitching, but doesn't want to let down her teammates. So we say something to her coach politely. The coach says that one of the other girls playing third base has actually pitched before, and she'll put her in to pitch the next inning. My daughter feels very relieved.
So the next inning, our new pitcher goes out and starts warming up. After one of her warm-up pitches, one of her teammates in the field calls her name, and she looks over at who called for her. The catcher, not paying attention throws the ball back to the substitute pitcher who isn't looking, and it hits her hard in the face, and she starts screaming and crying.
They have to take her out and my daughter, who is now at first base, just looks at us and rolls her eyes.
She ended up pitching that whole game too.
So it can happen. Thom and Chris brought that memory back to me.