LOGAN, Utah — If it weren’t for a home run during a recreational softball playoff game in northern Utah, a man who fell into an irrigation ditch might have drowned.

Bart Griffiths was fetching a ball that was hit over a fence at the Willow Park Sports Complex when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.

“I was picking it up and walking back in, and I glanced over toward the swamp, and I thought I saw something gray,” Griffiths said. “What it was, was the tire of the wheelchair sticking up. And I thought, `Why is somebody dumping something in the swamp?”’

But then he spotted a 62-year-old man nearby, face-down in about 6 inches of water. Griffiths thought the man was dead.

“When I lifted him up I said, `Can you hear me?’ And he said, `I’m dying,”’ Griffiths said. “And I thought to myself, `Oh, that’s a good sign (he’s talking).”

Griffiths called 911 on his cellphone, and paramedics transported the man to the hospital. First responders said the man, had probably been in the ditch for 15 to 30 minutes.