High School Baseball Coach Sued After Player Suffers Severe Injury on Slide Attempt

If you've ever played baseball at any level -- Little League, high school, college or the pros -- you've been asked by your third base coach to slide at some point.

Most of the time, all that happens is you get dirty and a safe or out call is made. Unfortunately, for 15-year-old Jake Mesar, he suffered a severe ankle injury when sliding into third base that ended his baseball career, among other things.

The story doesn't end there, as the high school third base coach, John A. Suk, was sued for essentially having the kid slide into the base, causing the devastating injury.

Seven years and more than $75,000 in legal fees later, Suk won the case. Again, it's awful what happened to the kid, but the catastrophic injury is not on the coach.

If Suk would've lost, the ruling could have changed high school sports forever, and not for the better.

“It’s the end of high school sports,” Suk said. “The coaching profession would be under heavy scrutiny for everything that happens. Coaches are going to have to have insurance like doctors have for malpractice. School districts are not going to want to take the risk of having sports."

Ron Mesar, the father of the now 22-year-old Jake, believes that his son was wronged and not all of the facts were brought up during the trial. Mesar doesn't necessarily want Suk to pay the price, instead he wants the administrators who gave him the job in the first place to take the blame for hiring someone who wasn't fully prepared to keep the kids safe.

“You have people just taking the extra $8,000 who don’t know what the hell they’re doing,” Rob Mesar says. “Somebody’s got to be responsible. Nobody is!”

You understand his point but you don't need to be a baseball genius to be a high school third base coach. Suk had him slide at an appropriate distance (six feet) and the kid got injured. It's an unfortunate side-effect in all sports. We hope Jake Mesar can get past this hurdle.