Girl, 2, faces long recovery
The little girl hit with a foul ball Wednesday at Yankee Stadium faces an extended road to recovery, a relative said Friday.
“She’s stable,” the family member, who declined to give his name, said Friday at New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, where the girl remained. “It’s going to be a long process.”
While the Yankees didn’t offer any official comment on the situation Friday, third baseman Todd Frazier, the player whose 105-mph foul ball struck the girl, said he had spoken Thursday with the girl’s father.
“I talked to the dad and she is doing good,’’ Frazier told The Post following an early batting practice session Friday afternoon at Rogers Centre. “He is a very nice guy and we had a five-minute conversation. I told him I was going to call every day, and he said that would be good.’’
He later added, in a group interview session: “[The girl’s father] told me not to stress over it, and to understand it’s nobody’s fault — that it is one of those freak accidents. The family is happy she is OK. She is going to have some tests in a couple of days and hopefully she will get out of there. ... Eventually, I will meet up with them. So he was enthused about that.”
The girl’s father was not at Wednesday’s game with his daughter, Frazier said. The girl went with a grandfather.
The Yankees return home Monday, when they will play the Royals in a day game, and it isn’t realistic to expect the netting to be extended by then, or at any time this year if they play long into the postseason, multiple industry sources said. The Mets executed their plan for extended netting over an 11-day span in July, including the AllStar break, during which they had no games, and that went into action after much research and discussion. The Yankees, who indicated last month to season-ticket holders they are contemplating extended netting for next year, would have to first green-light a vision before acting on it, and that’s why the earliest the Stadium adds to its netting figures to be next season.
“I think 2018 is too late,” Frazier said. “It should be up sooner than that.”
On Thursday, in the wake of the Stadium accident, four teams — the Reds, Padres, Mariners and Rockies — announced plans to extend their ballpark netting for 2018.
No such announcement had been made by the Yankees as of Friday evening. Their offices have been lightly occupied thanks to some employees taking off for Rosh Hashanah and others being excused to attend the funeral on Wednesday, in the Tampa area, of beloved longtime team executive Gene Michael, who died Sept. 7.