BP Daily Podcast

I believe the incident Sam might have been thinking of that resulted in injury was the Guinness Book of World Records catch of a ball dropped from 800 feet from a blimp in 1939, caught by Joe Sprinz. It was supposedly traveling 154-mph* and was caught such that it "broke his upper jaw in twelve places, fractured five of his teeth and [he] was rendered unconscious".

Here's a source for the story:
http://www.danieldemers.com/BASEBALL-PAGE2.php


* I'm no physicist, but this seems dubious... I would think terminal velocity would be reached sooner and so the speed wouldn't be much different than the ~100 mph estimated from the 200-300 foot plane drops. And in fact, this source suggests terminal velocity of a baseball is around 74 mph:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/airfri2.html