Judge Crater

Orioles color commentator (Hall Of Famer) Jim Palmer stuck his foot in the linguistic soup the other day, asking his play-by-play partner Kevin Brown, "Did you ever take a selfie of yourself?"

"Selfie" implies "of oneself," and lately, we're not happy to do that, no sir. We need to have national parks or famous highway signs or flower gardens behind us as we pose.

But I'm here to say, it might be better if we all designate someone to be our "selfie buddy" so they can help us line up the shot, to make sure we don't walk into a bear's den or tumble into a volcano.

It was just a week ago a Baltimorean made worldwide news, and for once, their renown did not come as the result of shooting people. This globetrotter went to Italy and fell into Mount Vesuvius while trying to take a selfie, according to Italian officials.

The guy is 23, so he should be old enough to know better. There he was, hiking along the pumice with his family.  As Baltimoreans will do, they breached the rules and accessed the top of Vesuvius through a trail they were told not to use, say  Naples police. 

So there they were, at the peak of the volcano that destroyed Pompeii in the year 79.  And the man, identified by NBC News as Philip Carroll, reached for his phone to snap that one-in-a-lifetime shot, 4,000 feet up. 

At that moment, he wished he had just gone to Ocean City instead.

But his phone fell into the crater, says Paolo Cappelli, president of the Presidio Permanente Vesuvio, a base for guides at the top of Vesuvius. And when Mr Carroll reached for the cell, he lost his footing and dropped into the crater.

“This morning a tourist for reasons still to be determined … together with his family they ventured on a forbidden path, arrived on the edge of the crater and fell into the mouth of #Vesuvius,” said Gennaro Lametta, a government tourism official, on Facebook.

Cappelli said that a team of guides on the other side of the rim saw that the man “had slipped inside the crater and was in serious trouble.”

“Four volcanological guides were set in motion instantly and, arriving on-site, one of them was lowered with a rope for about 15 meters to allow them to secure the unwary tourist,” Cappelli said, adding that Carroll could have plunged 300 meters, or nearly 1,000 feet, into the crater.

Posting photos, Lametta wrote that the man was unconscious when the guides reached him. Police says the man was given medical care by an ambulance along the mountain trail but refused transport to a hospital.

In 2018, a study by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences found that more than 250 people worldwide had died while taking selfies between 2011 and 2017. Leading cause? drowning, followed by transportation accidents (oncoming train, etc) and falling from heights.

Animal attacks, firearm discharges, and electrocutions followed lower in the list of Ways To Die For A Stupid Selfie.

And here's the hot sauce on top of it all: when you get home, no one wants to see your vacation pictures anyway! Put your phone in your pocket and enjoy the view. You can tell Aunt Mabel all about it when you get home.