MLB needs to do more
For fan protection, nets need to be extended to foul poles
How many more fans have to get hit by foul balls before Major League Baseball gets it together? On Wednesday an attorney for the family of the 2-year-old girl struck by a foul ball during a Cubs-Astros game on May 29 announced that child suffered a fractured skull and had a seizure.
Albert Almora Jr., the Cubs player whose foul ball struck the girl sitting in the stands along the third base line at Minute Maid Park, was distraught (he has kids of his own), and said, “I want to put a net around the whole stadium.”
But that little girl isn’t the only person who’s been hit by a foul ball this season.
Twelve days after that incident, a woman watching a White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago had to leave the game bleeding from the head after being struck by a foul ball hit by Eloy Jimenez. Then on June 23 a woman at a Dodger game was sitting in right field by the first base line when a foul ball hit by Cody Bellinger struck the side of her head.
All of these fans ended up in the hospital and all of those players have called for action be taken to protect the fans. There’s been general fan support, as well, for extending protective netting — which was extended league-wide from dugout to dugout for the 2018 season after several fans were struck by foul balls in the ’17 season, like when then-Yankee Todd Frazier’s foul ball struck a 2-year-old girl in September ’17. But dugout-to-dugout proved inefficient in August of last year when a 79-year-old woman died after getting hit in the head with a foul ball at Dodger Stadium.
While various teams have announced plans to extend their protective netting (the Dodgers and White Sox included), MLB has made it clear it is unlikely to mandate league-wide changes until the offseason, citing fan injuries don’t happen frequently enough to warrant immediate change.
“Look, I think it is important
that we continue to focus on fan safety,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told the Associated Press on June 5. “If that means that the netting has to go beyond the dugouts, so be it. Each ballpark is different. The reason I hesitate with ‘beyond the dugout,’ I mean, a lot of clubs are beyond the dugout already.
“But, there is a balance here. We do have fans that are vocal about the fact that they don’t want to sit behind nets. I think that we have struck the balance in favor of fan safety so far, and I think we will continue to do that going forward.”
It seems like an obvious solution to protect the fans who want to watch games without worrying about their grandparents, parents, children, etc., will fall victim to an injury that could’ve been prevented. Yet, there are still those who are utterly opposed to the idea fans should be protected from solid objects launched at 100-plus mile-per-hour speeds. Yes, there are fans who still blame every one else for the problem, out of sheer selfishness for their individual game day experience.
When calls to extend netting again from foul pole to foul pole, and the news of said 2year-old’s diagnosis were released, people on Twitter and elsewhere sounded off.
One person said, “the parents should go to jail.” For what? For trying to have a family outing at a baseball game? I didn’t know going to a baseball game meant not being allowed to bring children. Baseball is widely regarded as being one of the most familyfriendly sporting events. MLB prides itself on this. Have you seen Facebook’s Father’s Day take-your-kid-to-the-game commercial? You can’t just change the narrative and say “no kids allowed.”
Another person said, “I came to watch the game, not a net.” Well, seeing as people who sit behind the net at the backstop still flinch when balls get fouled back, I can say with full confidence, you and the other fans saying the same, will get over it. In Japan, all of the stands are covered by protective netting and you know what they’ve never experienced? Fans leaving with bruises, bloodied in the head, or dead.
Let’s face it, baseball is a different game today than it was even 10 years ago.
Players are under a lot of pressure to hit balls as hard as they can, produce more extrabase hits, contribute as much as they possibly can, pitch as hard as they can, and the growing stat-obsessed baseball culture proves this. Teams are telling players not just to get on base, but to crush the ball, especially if you’re a player known for monster mashing your way through seasons.
These aren’t bad things. They’re not the reason for the uptick in fan injuries. MLB not keeping up and trying to prevent them from happening in the first place is.
But for those still victimblaming, let’s think logically. On June 20, Giancarlo Stanton hit a line drive for a single toward second base, which bounced into center field. The ball was clocked at 118 mph and is one of the hardest hit balls this season. Imagine that ball whipped right or left enough to go foul into the stands. Could you react fast enough?
Yes, we can go back and forth that stadiums make announcements before every game to be vigilant of flying balls and bats, that fans should be paying attention to the games like hawks, that there’s some risk with going to any game. But the fact of the matter remains — if there is something MLB can do to protect the fans to the best of their ability, it has to be done and it has to be done now.