Broadcast partner Skip Caray said, "He'd be a very dead person, I think."
Nope, Kobman’s still in Ohio, where Deadspin writer Dave McKenna caught up with him.
The kid who didn't die at Riverfront Stadium: https://t.co/CQkVKd0r4j pic.twitter.com/kReuaOlv2h
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) August 2, 2017
From the fascinating story, “He is alive and 54 years old and has a wife and two kids in graduate school and runs a shipping business in the Cincinnati area, where he still resides.”
Kobman’s memory remains sharp.
“I got the ball! But I forgot where I was,” he told Deadspin. “And that railing hit my legs right around the knees and flipped me, and all of a sudden I’m over the rail. At that point, I know something’s going to happen, and it won’t be good. I’m thinking, ‘I’m going to fall.’ ”
Which he did.
But he hung on . . . to something.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I’ve slowed it down, looked frame by frame, and I still have no idea how I grabbed on. I hit that wall and I’m banging around like a Volvo crash dummy, but I didn’t fall.”
With the help of surrounding fans, he climbed back up and over the railing.
This is a long, riveting read about almost happened, and Kobman still marvels from time to time about his fate.
“At Riverfront, I didn’t make a choice to take a risk. I wasn’t like a guy who chooses to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel,” he said. “I didn’t choose to go over that railing. It just happened, and I was very fortunate. Nobody knows why.”
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