Free shirts really bowl over fans.

Byline: REBECCA NOLAN The Register-Guard

Ah, minor league baseball: hotdogs, home runs and - broken fingers? Ouch.

Normally good, clean fun, Ems games have been producing a few casualties lately, and not just due to too much warm beer and sunshine.

It seems the air gun used to fire souvenir T-shirts to the crowd has gone a little haywire during recent games, turning the freebies into fabric missiles and leaving some sports fans with painful memories.

One man ended up with two broken fingers while plucking a T-shirt from the sky, and a woman got smacked in the face.

"This is supposed to be entertaining family fun," said Ems President Bob Beban, when reached at the stadium Wednesday. "We don't want to be shooting a line drive into someone."

The gun started acting up a few games back, spitting out the tightly-wrapped shirts with a bit too much gusto, Beban said. Attempts to fix the problem failed.

The device had always been a bit testy, lobbing shirts onto the roof and such, but this was getting ridiculous.

Tom Penix Sr. was enjoying Monday's game from behind home plate, about halfway up the stands. All was well until the fifth or sixth inning, when the air gun guys emerged and started firing T-shirts from the third base dugout.

"I was just sitting there and all of a sudden I realized it wasn't going to miss us," Penix said.

He got the shirt, and two broken fingers with it.

Ems management was very apologetic, Penix said, and "super, super nice."

When Beban learned of Penix's injuries, along with those of a woman hit in the face in a similar incident, he sidelined the device for Wednesday's game. And when it returns to the field today, it will be facing away from the crowd.

From now on, a few brave souls will be selected to stand in the outfield and catch T-shirts fired from home base, Beban said.

Even with two fingers splinted, Penix remains a loyal, if somewhat gun-shy, Ems fan.

"I'll go back to an Ems game," he said. "I just won't try to catch anything."