"Catch a line drive right in the eye"?

In the American sport of baseball, a line drive occurs when the batter hits the ball very hard, and it flies directly off in a straight line. If one were hit in the eye with a line drive, it would very likely do a serious injury and probably would knock out the person who had been hit.

Thank you!

He's right. Don't assume this is a common English expression, though. It's just a creative example of an unfortunate event.

Jeeze, Joe, it hurt just to watch that.

I've never heard this particular phrase used before either. A more common one is,

Sb'd rather stick a needle in his/her eye than [do something].

When I played ball this happened to one of our players, she was knocked out cold and had a beauty of a shiner. For the rest of the year, whenever she made a great play, we'd all shout "Way to keep your eye on the ball".