Head Injury

  Did you wonder where San Francisco Giants first-base coach Roberto Kelly was during Game 1 of the NL Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals? He was recovering from a line drive to the head by Giants catcher Buster Posey during batting practice. Kelly sustained a concussion Saturday after getting hit in the back of the head while standing near second base. As you can see in the video above, Kelly walked off the field with assistance. He was taken to a San Francisco hospital where he was diagnosed with a concussion.

After crashing with more than 20 other drivers in a last-lap melee Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr. lashed out at what he called the "ridiculous" pack racing on the high-banked oval. The driver also occasionally held his head afterward, although he said he was not injured. Turns out that wasn't the case. Earnhardt will miss the next two Sprint Cup Series races after his second concussion in the past six weeks, most likely ending the championship chances of NASCAR's most popular driver.

It was not a pretty sight Sunday, when fans of the Kansas City Chiefs cheered as their team's quarterback, Matt Cassell, had to leave the game against the Baltimore Ravens because of head injury. Cassel was hurt when he was hit by the Ravens' Haloti Ngata while completing a pass in the fourth quarter of the Chiefs' 9-6 loss at Kansas City, Mo. Cassel remained prone on the ground after being hit, and fans cheered the sight of the injured Cassel, who has not played that well for the Chiefs the last two seasons.

UCLA guard Jeff Baca is expected to return to practice this week after missing the last two games with what was called a head injury. Baca was held out against Oregon State at the last minute Saturday. He has been suffering from headaches the last two weeks but was cleared to practice this week after undergoing tests Sunday. Coach Jim Mora was coy, saying only: "We'll get a clearer picture on his future [Monday]. " Mora said that "we don't want to make excuses," but Baca's absence from the lineup did play a role in the Bruins' struggles on the ground against the Beavers.

Wisconsin running back Montee Ball suffered a head injury Saturday against Texas-El Paso and was taken out of the game, according to the official Twitter account of the Badgers. Ball scored on a one-yard run with 14 minutes, 13 seconds remaining in the second quarter, but took a shot to the head on the play. After being examined by team medical personnel, he was ruled out for the rest of the game. This has been a rough season for Ball, a 2011 Heisman Trophy finalist. Actually, it got rough even before the season.

"Head Games" isn't fooling around. It's a complex, determined look at one of the most pernicious problems facing organized sports on all levels, but because its director is Steve James, this is more than your standard problem documentary. James is not only the director of "Hoop Dreams," the consensus pick as the best sports doc ever made, he is also, as last year's "The Interrupters" demonstrated, a filmmaker with an unusually deft touch. There's more nuance in "Head Games," more space for a wider perspective, than we usually see in films that tell us in no uncertain terms that the sky is falling.

Heads have been in the sports news recently, and not happily. Oakland Athletics pitcher Brandon McCarthy took a line drive off the bat of the Angels' Erick Aybar last week and had surgery to reduce swelling around a skull fracture. Those are always scary words when it comes to a head, anybody's head: surgery to reduce swelling. Thoughts quickly raced to that day in 1957, when star left-hander Herb Score of the Cleveland Indians took a line drive in the right eye off the bat of Gil McDougald of the New York Yankees.

Kristin Chenoweth suffered injuries far greater than many realized when she was knocked down by falling equipment on the Brooklyn set of her hit show "The Good Wife. " Making her first TV appearance  since the July accident caused her to be removed from set on a stretcher and taken to Bellevue Hospital, the 44-year-old actress talked on Friday's "Live! With Kelly & Michael" about just how badly she had been hurt. "Basically a big lighting thing fell and hit me. [It] knocked me out, knocked my face and slammed me down to the ground.

Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Mike Wallacesaid there's no need to hold him back for Sunday's season opener in Denver despite a lengthy holdout that didn't end until last week. Wallace, a restricted free agent, skipped all of Pittsburgh's off-season activities and the first month of training camp while trying to get a new deal. He didn't sign his one-year tender worth about $2.7 million until last Tuesday and wasn't cleared to practice until Friday while sitting out a mandatory three-day acclimation period.

Robyn Almodovar shouldn't be a bit disappointed that she was eliminated this week on "Hell's Kitchen. " Instead, she should be thinking, "How did I make it through to the top six on 'Hell's Kitchen'?!?!" Chef Gordon Ramsay said it. She had plenty of heart and passion. But she just didn't have the maturity and the temperament. At times, she was little more than a big baby with a handkerchief tied around her head. This week saw one of the best competitions of each season, the "taste it, now make it" challenge, ushered in by famed L.A. chefs Ludo Lefebvre and Quinn Hatfield.