Jose Osuna<\/a> swung his bat, which flew out of his hands and struck the left side of Kawakami’s head.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old fell to the ground and was rushed to hospital, where he had emergency surgery and was placed in intensive care.<\/p>\n
Latest reports say he has still not regained consciousness and is undergoing treatment.<\/p>\n
Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) on Monday approved a rule change to punish players if they swing their bats in a dangerous manner.<\/p>\n
Under the new rule, which comes into force on Tuesday, players will receive a warning if they make a dangerous swing but their bat does not hit anyone.<\/p>\n
They will be ejected from the game if they do it twice, or if they make a dangerous swing and their bat hits someone.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
A dangerous swing is defined as when a batter releases their bat mid-swing, including when it slips out of their hands.<\/p>\n
Venezuelan batter Osuna, who plays for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, apologised after his bat struck Kawakami.<\/p>\n
“I’m very sorry about what happened today when my bat hit the main umpire. I hope he’s well, I’m really sorry,” he wrote in a post on X soon after.<\/p>\n
Two days after the incident, NPB implemented a rule requiring all umpires to wear helmets.<\/p>\n
Kawakami was wearing a face protection mask and baseball cap, not a helmet.<\/p>\n
Umpires across Japan wore the number 29 on their helmets last week in solidarity with Kawakami.<\/p>\n
amk\/dh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japanese baseball has adopted a rule to punish players for dangerous swings, as an umpire remains unconscious almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,39553,87808,5068,85948,87809,2353,2352,87669,4081],"class_list":["post-696844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-npb","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-umpire","tag-dangerous-swings","tag-japanese-baseball","tag-jose-osuna","tag-kawakami","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-npb","tag-takuto-kawakami","tag-tokyo-yakult-swallows"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116560802875994533","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}