NEW YORK -- Twice in the past week, a pitcher has been hit by a line drive back at him. And Billy Wagner's advice to Hiroki Kuroda of the Dodgers and Darin Downs, a Rays farmhand: You will never completely get over it.In July 1998, Wagner took a liner off the left side of his head -- while he was on the same mound where Kuroda was felled 11 years later.
"You just have to kind of go straight through and say, 'Hey, I'm going to pitch through it, I'm not going to worry about it,'" Wagner told FanHouse on Tuesday. "But you do have that thought in the back of your mind. I still walk out there, I mean, in a minor-league (rehabilitation) game, you sit there and they call fastball away or something like that, you go, 'Awww.' You think about getting that ball coming back at you. There's no doubt."
