College baseball player Jose Avila took another bean ball Thursday when the California Supreme Court ruled that pitches aimed at a batter’s head are a historic and intrinsic part of the national pastime.

“For better or worse,” Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote for a 6-1 court, “being intentionally thrown at is a fundamental and inherent risk of the sport of baseball. It is not the function of tort law to police such conduct.”