If it’s assault to angrily throw a ball into the stands, then doesn’t it stand to reason that to hurl a bat into the stands counts as gross negligence and/or reckless endangerment?

And all that happened was that some dude had the imprint of stiches on his forehead?  Man, I was think there was going to be an ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ incident. 

God, our government sure has a hell of a lot of spare time on their hands, don’t they?  What a loser prosecutor.

TCM: totally agree. I’m not sure how this one gets to a jury in the first place.  You have to plead this one out if you’re the defense, so the fact that he’s talking to a jury at all means he screwed up.

Or it’s possible that the prosecution simply won’t deal at all for political reasons. That doesn’t happen too often, though.  If it did, however, the defense should probably think about emphasizing the heat-of-the-moment aspect of it and play up sympathy for the sentencing phase.  As it is, they’re trying to thread the needle by saying “yeah, he threw the ball with intent, but not to hit anyone.”  Eh.  How about “he just kind of freaked and didn’t think what he was doing.”

Remember the ol’ Kids in the Hall bit where Dave Foley baked a cake with a saw in it to bust Kevin McDonald out of jail?  And the warden made him serve pieces until there was just the outline of a saw left…

...and then after the gig was up, come to find out Kevin was being paroled the next day.

God I miss funny television.