Peter Lenz, 13 Year-Old Motorcycle Racer, Dies at Indy GP

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An accomplished 13-year-old motorcycle racer died Sunday after he fell off his bike and was run over by another motorcycle at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The racer, Peter Lenz of Vancouver, Wash., was pronounced dead by the Marion County coroner, who said Lenz had sustained “traumatic injuries.” Lenz crashed on a warm-up lap before his race and was struck by 12-year-old Xavier Zayat, who was uninjured.

Medical workers immediately placed Lenz in a neck brace, put him on a stretcher and began chest compressions while taking him to a hospital. The coroner confirmed his death about three hours later. It was the first death of a competitor at the speedway since the IndyCar driver Tony Renna was killed in October 2003. Read more

Brandon Patch, a Batty Ruling

Our overly litigious society put another notch in its belt last week after a Montana jury awarded the parents of an 18-year-old boy $850,000 after their son, Brandon Patch, was killed in an American Legion game in 2003 when a baseball — hit with an aluminum Louisville Slugger baseball bat — struck Patch in the head. Patch was on the mound when he couldn’t react in time to a comebacker in the tragic accident.

Attorneys for the Patch family argued the bat manufacturer, Hillerich & Bradsby, did not provide proper warning about the dangers of using aluminum bats, meaning that the jury did not find the bat itself to be defective. The special verdict says the failure to warn was the cause of the accident.

As the parent of two children, my heart goes out to the player’s parents. It really does. But the assumed risk and dangers of baseball are obvious to anyone playing. If you get hit by a baseball, it’s going to hurt. Get hit by a ball jumping off an aluminum bat, and, yeah, it’s probably going to hurt even worse. Read more