NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A minor league baseball coach died after being struck in the head by a line drive as he stood in the first-base coach’s box during a game, police said.
Tulsa Drillers coach Mike Coolbaugh, 35, was hit during the ninth inning Sunday by a foul ball off the bat of Tino Sanchez of the Arkansas Travelers. He was taken to Baptist Medical Center-North Little Rock, where he was pronounced dead.
Surgeons worked Thursday to save a 74-year-old Oakland man’s life — and abide by his religious conviction — as they performed emergency open-heart surgery without giving him a blood transfusion.
As a Jehovah’s Witness, LeRoy Grant believes the Bible forbids blood transfusions. He felt he could not compromise his beliefs.
“If I violate God’s law on blood simply to gain a few more days — or years — of life, I would be dead spiritually, and my relationship with God would be damaged beyond repair,” Grant said recently at his home.
Such a belief once meant almost certain death, but Grant was recuperating late Thursday after the four-hour procedure. Medical technology has advanced to the point that many doctors believe surgeries without blood transfusions should become the norm.
The so-called “bloodless” surgeries use drugs to raise blood counts before an operation and limit blood loss during it. A “cell-saver” machine also allows physicians to collect pooling blood during surgery, wash it and infuse it back into the body intravenously.
The United States will have a female president next year — on the Fox TV series “24.”
Tony Award-winning actress Cherry Jones will play President Allison Taylor when the show about the exploits of counterterrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) returns in January for its seventh season, the network announced Sunday.
