Girl hit at Yankees game rekindles net discussion

NEW YORK — It might be the shot heard around the baseball world: the rocket-like foul ball that hit a young girl at a New York Yankees game.

In the hours after the girl was struck in the face by the 105-mph screamer, the game’s commissioner vowed to push harder for all teams to extend protective netting to the end of the dugouts and the Cincinnati Reds committed to do just that by next year.

Several legal observers of baseball, which has long been shielded from lawsuits over fan injuries, saw it as a potential game changer.

“America’s pastime is breaking America’s heart. That little girl, that’s everyone’s daughter,” said lawyer Bob Hilliard, who represents fans in a California lawsuit that seeks class action status to sue on behalf of 1,750 fans hit by balls and bats at games each year.

The toddler remained hospitalized Thursday. Her father said soon after she was hit, “She’s doing all right. Just keep her in your thoughts.”

About a third of the 30 major league teams, the Yankees not among them, have at the commissioner’s urging extended the netting to at least the far end of the dugout.

Hilliard’s lawsuit seeks to go further, to force clubs to extend protective netting from foul pole to foul pole. But like other lawsuits over decades, it was tossed out.

Most of the fans struck by balls and bats at games each year suffer minor injuries, but a few have been critically injured or killed. The more tragic results include a 14-year-old boy who died four days after he was hit on the left side of his head at Dodger Stadium in May 1970 and a 39-year-old woman who died a day after she was struck in the temple by a foul ball at a San Angelo Colts game in 2010.

But fans may be unaware of the stark legal reality of baseball: Successfully suing teams over such cases is nearly impossible. The fine print on every baseball ticket comes with a disclaimer that the bearer “assumes all risk and danger incidental to the game.”

For the last century or so, baseball has been virtually immune from such lawsuits.