The scoreboard at Wrigley Field in Chicago, pictured in 2017, is manually operated (Stacy Revere)

Chicago (AFP) – A Chicago baseball fan attending a game at a historic stadium in the midwestern US city has a plastic bucket to thank for saving him from serious injury.

The 19-year-old fan of the city’s Cubs was wearing the bucket on his head Tuesday at a night game against the visiting Arizona team when a metal tile fell off of the manually operated scoreboard at Wrigley Field, according to the Chicago Tribune. 

The fan was mostly shielded by the bucket, though he needed five staples to close a gash on his head, the newspaper said. 

A team spokesman said this was the first known instance of such an accident involving the 81-year-old scoreboard, which is something of a relic at a time when most parks have huge  high-definition video scoreboards.

The team is investigating the cause.

The stadium itself is more than 100 years old, the second oldest in the country after Boston’s legendary Fenway Park — the only other major-league park with a hand-turned scoreboard.

A recent renovation project left the Wrigley scoreboard untouched. 

Chicagoans take pride in the historic stadium and count the scoreboard — whose numbered tiles are switched out by workers inside the structure to show the scores of games around the league — as an iconic treasure. 

The team offered no explanation as to why the fan had a bucket on his head. 

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