Youth Baseball Tournament Attendees, Players Suffer Through Extreme Heat

Players competing at the regional youth baseball DYB World Series last week in Ruston, La., had to endure extreme heat, with field temperatures soaring above 150 degrees at times. 

According to the Associated Press, temperatures reached 105 degrees, with the heat index topping out at 117 degrees. 

Some spectators and umpires required treatment for heat-related symptoms, and a few passed out and were briefly hospitalized. 

“The heat was so extreme, I just knew it was a matter of time before something happened,” said Dr. Kelsey Steensland, an anesthesiologist from Dothan, Alabama, who was there to watch her 10-year-old son, Finn, play for a team representing their state.

Steensland eventually had to rush to help an elderly woman who collapsed during the opening ceremony. The woman didn't regain consciousness for several minutes. 

“This was a medical emergency,” Steensland said. “It was more than just giving someone a glass of water.”

DYB commissioner William Wade stressed preparedness for any event held during extreme heat. 

“The number one priority to any event that anybody puts on outdoors is the safety and health of the participants,” DYB Commissioner William Wade said. “We’ve got to do the best we can to preach whatever safety we can.”

DYB placed large evaporative coolers in the dugouts. During the first four days of the tournament, when temps were at their hottest, games were halted every two innings for a five-minute heat breaks. Cases of water were supplied to coaches, players and umpires. 

“One day they advised us that the temp was 167 on the field — and it felt like it,” umpire Tim Ward said, noting that he’d never been so hot in 25 years of calling balls and strikes. “You couldn’t stand still. You had to keep moving or your shoes would start getting soft on the bottom, and the heat was radiating up into you.”

Ward was behind home plate that day, wearing a mask and chest protector, and passed out between innings.

Steensland said she'd never experienced anything like it. 

“I’ve never experienced any kind of heat like this before. You can feel your eyes drying out,” said Steensland, who watched games with a misting fan pointed at her and her 7-month-old daughter.

“You’re either prepared or you’re not,” she said. “And the people that come prepared have a wagon full of hundreds of dollars of equipment — chairs, fans, tents. You have to have industrial grade fans to get through temperatures like this.”