Cody Herald saw the pitch bearing in on his hands, but he couldn’t hold back his swing.

The Butler graduate heard the ball crack off the bat, and then he heard another crack, this one coming from the right side of his face.

“I just hit the ball and it came up and got me,” said Herald, a sophomore at Seton Hill and an outfielder for the Butler BlueSox in the Prospect League. “I kind of went into shock.”

Herald fell to his knees just in front of home plate at Pullman Park on that cool evening on June 14 and dabbed his nose with his fingers.

He felt blood trickling.

“I just thought I broke my nose,” he said.

It was much worse than that, however.

After several minutes hunched on his knees, Herald left the field with a large ice pack pressed under his right eye on a gash that had opened up above his cheek bone. It already had begun to swell.

“They said my eye would be swollen shut, and it did,” Herald said. “That’s when I knew it was pretty bad.”

Herald had seven fractures on the right side of his face that required three plates to stabilize.

Still, Herald said he knew he would be able to come back and play this season for the BlueSox.

He will be cleared July 15 and hopes to return to the active roster soon after.

“(The doctor) told me the day of the surgery it was going to be three weeks and then I’d have to play with a mask,” said Herald, who still has a speck of blood around the pupil of his right eye. “I have to wear it at bat and in the field at least for a week, then I can take it off.

“I just want to be out there playing,” he added.

The recuperation period has been tough on him.

The doctor ordered no physical activity — not even weight lifting — because he didn’t want Herald to strain the muscles around his eye and cheek.

“In college, we were doing something every day,” Herald said. “And here, we were playing every day. It’s hard to come watch the games because I want to be out there so badly.”

Before the injury, Herald was just beginning to find a groove after somewhat of a slow start.

He had hit safely in four straight games, including three consecutive multi-hit games, and had raised his average to .276.

Herald said he had felt some pressure playing in his home town, but had begun to put that out of his head.

Then the injury happened.

The fluky nature of it also made Herald take pause.

“You just never hear about this sort of thing happening,” Herald said. “You see it when people are bunting, but never while swinging. So, I was just surprised how it happened and when I thought, ‘Wow, I have to get surgery,’ it was shocking.”

Butler manager Anthony Rebyanski said he had never seen anything like that, either.

“I’ve never seen that off of a swing,” Rebyanski said. “About every other day, he’ll text me, ‘I can’t wait to get back. I can’t standing sitting.’

“He might be a little bit rusty off the bat, but he’s a great team guy,” he added. “These guys are so close. When he is on the field, he will have a presence there as well.”

Herald said it was the worst injury he’s even had playing baseball.

All he cares about now is getting back on the field as soon as possible after that July 15 date.

“Oh, I can’t wait,” he said, smiling. “I can’t wait.”