WILL CHAPMAN The Daily Iberian.

Sometimes you just have to take your chances, especially in Las Vegas, not just as the gaming tables but also at the ballpark.

An Associated Press story reported how a Las Vegas woman had sued ballpark owners after she was hit in the face with a foul ball.

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She was knocked out, suffered a broken nose and required reconstructive surgery after being hit by the foul ball. She had been a season ticket holder to the Las Vegas 51s baseball team, part of the Pacific Coast League.

Following the incident, her attorneys said she was too anxious to sit through a live baseball game.

A lower court ruled against her in 2005 and the recent AP story came following a 4-3 ruling by the Nevada state Supreme Court that upheld the lower court ruling, that the ballpark wasn’t liable for her injuries.

 She was reportedly eating a sandwich in a mezzanine beer garden, above the third base line, and never saw the ball coming.

Ballparks are required to provide protected seating behind home plate and in other high-risk areas. Where this victim was, several hundred feet from home plate, just wasn’t considered high risk.

Presumably for those not seated or standing behind a screen, watching for fly balls is a personal responsibility.

I attended a New York Yankees versus Baltimore Orioles game in Yankee Stadium years ago and saw a fan knocked out, or at least knocked silly, by a foul ball. Medical personnel had to evacuate the fan, who was hit in the face by the fast moving ball.

I recall we were sympathetic to the fan’s plight, but were impressed that Cal Ripken Jr., a huge star then, a Hall of Famer now, had fouled the ball as if somehow that made it better.

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In a couple of different recent stays in hotels, in different cities, I had an experience I’ve had before where the cleaning people took my bars of soap each day, replacing them with new bars, still in the wrappers.

 While I would prefer not inherit a used bar of soap left from some previous guest, I don’t have a problem washing my hands and face or taking my shower with the same bar of soap I used the day before.

But in my recent hotel stays, like a number before them, the cleaning people each day took away the open soap and left me new bars.

I’ve read how airlines can save hundreds of thousands of dollars a year eliminating those little bags of peanuts or pretzels they give out.

I’ve got to think some of the hotel chains could save some big dollars by being more conservative with replacing hardly used soap bars.

I do appreciate having clean towels every day, thinking that’s a nice luxury a hotel provides as part of what it charges for a room.

But I just can’t imagine that many people thinking poorly of a hotel that leaves a once or twice used bar of soap for the same guest to use during his stay.

Give me a dollar off my room rate. I’ll be happy to reuse my soap.

WILL CHAPMAN is publisher of The Daily Iberian.