A baseball can travel from a bat to the seats in slightly less than a second.

That blur is long enough to horrify a group of Sky Sox players because it’s not always an empty seat that the ball finds.

“It happened just last week in Salt Lake,” Christian Colonel said. “A ball hit a lady and looked like it just blew up her face. I was at third base and I could hear it hit her all the way over behind first base.”

The game was stopped for a few minutes as medical staff tended to the woman. She’ll be fine but has a better understanding of the dangers of a batted ball.

That knowledge is nothing new to Colonel. It’s been nearly two years — July 22, 2007 — since he and a handful of Sky Sox players were playing for Double-A Tulsa when first-base coach Mike Coolbaugh was struck by a line drive in the back of the neck and never regained consciousness.

Two years have started to fade certain memories for Mike Miller. He strained to remember details such as the number of outs or the trajectory of the hit to right field that put him on first base during the ninth inning of a game in Little Rock, Ark.

But he clearly recalled that the count was 3-1 to Tino Sanchez when Coolbaugh leaned toward him with a routine reminder that he’ll never forget.

“He just said, ‘If you’re going first-to-third, you’ve got to make sure,’” Miller said.

Those proved to be Coolbaugh’s last words.

Sanchez, a left-handed hitter, jumped too early on an inside pitch and lined it foul. Coolbaugh instinctively threw his arms up and turned away, exposing the back of his neck. The ball struck at the base of his skull and burst an artery. He still had a pulse when he reached the hospital, but doctors said it was more-or-less an instant death.Colonel and teammate Chris Frey were watching from the dugout.

“I was hopeful, obviously, but I kind of knew,” Frey said. “It looked like he got shot.”

Trainers rushed out and Tulsa manager Stu Cole, now the Sky Sox manager, sent for the medical bag.

Miller, just a few paces away, could only watch.

“I was just kind of standing on first base, I didn’t want to hop in there,” he said. “I mean, what was I going to be able to do?”

The players gathered in the clubhouse when Coolbaugh was taken away by ambulance. They were there an hour later when word came that the game had been suspended. That’s also when Cole relayed the sad news.

Coolbaugh’s first day as the Drillers hitting coach came 18 days before his death, but it was enough time for the players to gain a glimpse into the life of a 35-year-old husband and father of two young boys — with a daughter on the way.

“He grew on us,” Colonel said. “It was just his knowledge of the game, his demeanor and how he went about teaching us.”

The Colorado Rockies voted to give a playoff share to Coolbaugh’s family, a sum that grew to more than $200,000 when they reached the World Series.

Others have helped to keep Coolbaugh’s story from fading. A book, “Heart of the Game,” by Sports Illustrated writer S.L. Price was released in May and there are reports of a possible movie deal.

Colonel keeps his old coach’s photo in his locker as a daily reminder — not that he needs it.

“I think about it all pretty often,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget.”

The most frightening part of the tragedy to the players who witnessed it is the ever-present threat of history repeating itself.

Baseball rules now require base coaches to wear helmets, but Coolbaugh was struck in the neck in an area that a helmet likely would have failed to protect.

“I see a lot of third-base coaches that I think are way too close to the hitter,” Colonel said. “I’m just like, ‘Wow, they’re crazy.’ I don’t really see how they haven’t learned and made the adjustments after what happened to Mike.”

But while they fear for their fellow players and coaches, the real danger, as they see it, lies in the stands.

“I don’t know why they don’t extend the protective nets past the dugouts,” Miller said. “There are some plays where you can watch the people track the ball, so you know they know it’s coming, and it’ll smash the seat next to them and then they react. They see and think they have time to get out of the way, but they just don’t realize how fast it’s really coming.”

Worse yet is when Miller sees a baby in the arms of an inattentive parent or a group of children gathered around a mascot and oblivious to the action on the field.

“It’s not that people don’t care,” Miller said. “They just don’t know.”

Miller knows. So do the rest of the 2007 Drillers, many of whom now comprise the Sky Sox. When an incident such as the woman being struck last week by a baseball occurs, they’ll often talk about it. They remember their old coach but mostly talk about the dangers that persist.

“You look around and these people are out here to have a good time,” Frey said. “It’s the last thing you want to do as a hitter. You don’t want anybody else to get hurt.”

Mike Coolbaugh, right in this 1998 photo, played for the Sky Sox before coaching at Tulsa. He died in 2007 when a foul ball struck him in the back of the neck. Photo by Jay Janner