The crack of the bat sounded like a gunshot over the radio.

Who knew it could produce the same deadly result?

"It's a 3-1 coming and Edwards delivers ... Sanchez ropes it foul, off the first-base coach. Oh, my goodness, that hit Mike Coolbaugh in his head, on his forehead, and he's been knocked out ..."

The voice belongs to Phil Elson, play-by-play man for the Class AA Arkansas Travelers by way of Squirrel Hill, Allderdice High School, Point Park College and a handful of minor league outposts. The game was a year ago today on a steamy Arkansas Sunday night at beautiful new Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock. One minute, Elson was hyping a promotion giving away a season pass to Texas League games. The next minute, he was describing to his listeners on Jammin' Oldies 101.1 what would turn out to be a real-life death scene.

"That is one of the most frightening things I have ever seen at a baseball park. ... This is just absolutely heartbreaking."

Elson didn't know how badly Coolbaugh -- in just his first month as the batting/first-base coach for the Tulsa Drillers after replacing former Pirate Orlando Merced -- was hurt, but he had a pretty good idea. "We have not seen him move one iota. ... We have perhaps seen a terrible tragedy unfold here on the field in North Little Rock."

Elson's boss -- Travelers executive vice president Bill Valentine -- stopped by the booth for that fateful ninth inning and also knew Coolbaugh was in real trouble. Valentine, a former American League umpire, knows as well as anyone the damage a baseball can do. He was behind the plate at Fenway Park in a 1967 game when a pitch from the California Angels' Jack Hamilton crushed the face of Boston Red Sox slugger Tony Conigliaro, damaging his eyesight and shortening his career.

"I think this guy is really hurt, Phil ... that was an absolutely terrifying thing."

The ball, smoked by Tulsa's Tino Sanchez, hit Coolbaugh below and behind his left ear, rupturing his left vertebral artery and causing a massive brain hemorrhage. Since the tragedy, professional baseball has made it a rule that first- and third-base coaches wear a batting helmet, but that wouldn't have saved Coolbaugh. Although he still had a pulse when he was rushed to a Little Rock hospital, he essentially was dead before he hit the ground. He was 35. It was the first death caused by a ball in a professional game in 87 years, since a fastball from the New York Yankees' Carl Mays struck and killed Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman at the Polo Grounds in 1920.

"The air has just been taken out of the ballpark and it is silent right now. ... Injuries are a part of baseball, but this kind of injury is not a part of baseball."

Elson, with Valentine, went on for almost 25 minutes after the accident, signing off before he received word of Coolbaugh's death. Certainly, they were the longest 25 minutes of his broadcasting career. He's 31, in his eighth season as voice of the Travelers after stops as an intern under Pirates publicist Jim Trdinich and doing radio work for teams in Helena, Mont.; Ogden, Utah; and Stockton, Calif. He first fell in love with the radio as a preteen when he followed his father, Howard, a prominent Pittsburgh pediatric dentist/actor/singer to KDKA-AM when his dad did a weekend sports talk show and he, mischievously, "would sneak through John Cigna's office." His lifelong goal: Lanny Frattare's job as voice of the Pirates.

Even now, a full year after the tragedy, Elson can't believe it happened.

"With policemen and firemen and people in the Army, death is always right around the corner," he said last week. "But not at a ballpark. That's one of the happiest places in the world."

The heartwarming aspect of the sad story is the way baseball's extended family quickly reacted to the loss of one its own. Players on the Colorado Rockies -- the Drillers' parent club -- voted to donate a full World Series share worth more than $233,000 to Coolbaugh's young family. Travelers fans raised more than $40,000, Elson said.

Other minor league clubs also sought donations. It seemed like just about everybody knew or at least crossed paths with Coolbaugh, who spent most of his 16-year career in the minors and played 39 games for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2001 and five with the St. Louis Cardinals in '02. If they didn't know him, they knew his older brother, Scott, who played 167 games in the big leagues in the late-1980s and early '90s.

The money is wonderful, but those touched by Coolbaugh's death never will get over it. Coolbaugh's wife, Mandy, and young children, Joey, Jake and Anne Michael, must go on without their husband and father. Anne Michael was born Nov. 2, almost 3 1/2 months after her dad died.

Scott Coolbaugh -- batting/first-base coach for the Texas League's Frisco RoughRiders -- has to stand in the same coaching box when his team comes to North Little Rock. Can you imagine the thoughts that go through his mind?

Players on the Drillers and Travelers had to play another game at Dickey-Stephens Park -- "The PNC Park of the minor leagues," Elson calls it, because it sits between two bridges on the Arkansas River and faces downtown Little Rock -- four days after Coolbaugh's death. "It was the most emotional day I've spent in baseball," Elson said.

Sanchez, who turned and swung hard at that inside fastball from the Travelers' Bill Edwards the way any number of batting coaches, including Coolbaugh, had taught him, was devastated. A career minor-leaguer, he returned home to Puerto Rico for 2 1/2 weeks after the accident, rejoined the Drillers for the rest of the season and then retired.

Then, there's Elson, who said he hasn't called a game since where he hasn't thought of Coolbaugh.

"I've been lucky to have some incredible moments in baseball," he said, quietly. "But I've also had one horrible one."