I’ve been to plenty of ball games. I love them. A net behind home plate is more than necessary. Nets on the sides? Ridiculous. It’s common sense. If you’re sitting in a splash zone at Sea World, water will be near you. If you sit five rows from a dugout, you’re in foul ball zone! (Welcome!) Coming back with food or from the bathroom, you have to wait in between batters before returning to those seats.
I wouldnt bring a kid to a game if he was too young to pay attention to the game sitting in those seats. That’s some mor common sense. Making a kid wear a helmet for the whole game is silly.
Incidentally, I’ve also been to concerts in those same baseball stadiums. Once I was slapped, another time beer spilled on me, and another time a drunk falling and landing on me. None of these were my interactions. (Got slapped when the guy in front of me ducked from whoever was hitting him.) Nets won’t help that.
Of course. The game is a gift from Heaven, and is meant to instill proper virtues, such as sportsmanship, fair play, and EARNING the right to go to bat by playing a defensive role on your team (the apex of athletic achievement is getting the opportunity to attempt to hit a fast-moving spheroid with a stick. Not even succeeding at it, that’s just welcome gravy; being allowed to TRY). And of course, taking your own turn, when it comes up, or leaving the game.
These are the things that make baseball a sacred rite, rather than a mere exercise in commerce, and make us better human beings.
Watching games behind netting is not enjoyable for me and many fans, even if you don’t have hopes of snagging a foul ball. Extending netting all the way past the dugouts will result in fewer people coming out to games.
If baseball wants to decrease fan interest and attendance, this is a good way to do it.
The seats behind the nets are always filled. There will be some carping about nets further down the line but I think it’s time. Not everyone who goes to a game watches each and every pitch. Some are minding children, some are getting money out for concessions, some are glancing at the scoreboard, some are looking at ther phone, and some are just there to accompany someone who wants to watch a game. If a ball or bat come at you in a moment of inattention, it could be fatal. I say extend the nets as far as first and third bases, lower deck only. Sure, it will detract from someone’s view. Sure, there will be less opportunities to catch a ball. But the NHL increased their net coverage a few years back and it didn’t hurt them.
Nets are coming. People will bitch and raise holy hell about it for five minutes, and then it will be accepted and forgotten.
Modern ballparks have more seats closer to the field than ever before. Besides the risk from baseballs, there is ever-increasing risk from bats. Modern pitchers throw hard, and modern batters swing hard. More bats explode upon contact, sending shards pinwheeling into the stands, and batters lose control of their bats, sending intact bats pinwheeling into the stands.
There’s more involved than my personal risk of injury. My enjoyment of the game is decreased, pretty dramatically, by watching other people get their skull crushed and be carried off on a medical cart. Nets are coming.
I was at that game. I have no wish to be able to make such a claim again. I have a son that I take to hockey practice or youth games up to three times a week. There is netting around the entirety of those rinks. You will see this happen in NHL rinks eventually.
Netting further out at baseball games is going to happen. It would make sense to happen before some is killed or has permanent brain injury, but it probably won’t. No, it does not interfere with your view of the game to any significant degree. If the only reason you attend games is to get a little interaction over the top of the dugout, well I don’t know what to tell you.
I had friend who had season tix in pretty much the same area as you did. They couldn’t attend all the games so another friend would buy about a third of their tix every year. And a nearly identical scenario happened to him as happened to you. Only he was hit in the face and the kid near him was a 7-ish year old boy. Luckily, my friend was only badly bruised – his glasses must have taken the brunt of the force as they were seriously mangled. It could have been much worse. What irked him the most was that all the people insisted he give the ball to the kid.
Point is, he said he didn’t even have time to get his hands in front of his face and he was watching. I went with him a few times, and I was terrified at least once every game. And one time we saw Chuck Knoblack (sp?) get hit in the dugout. He wasn’t paying attention!
I had season tix to the Kings when they introduced the nets. And I remember Brittanie Cecil – partly because my mom grew up in Columbus and I have a ton of relatives there.
Everybody bitched and moaned about how horrible the nets were. Swore they’d ruin the game. Ooooh, which is more horrible? The white nets? Or the black nets?
Well, I’d say by maybe the second game of the season (maybe halfway through the first game). You didn’t even notice them. Seriously.
My seats at Nats park are behind first base, but pretty far up so that when a ball comes screaming in, it’s slowed down a bit. I see people sitting with babies pretty close to the dugout and it makes me cringe. I also see people down there fiddling with their phones or otherwise not watching the game. One time an absolute rocket came in and hit the seat next to a woman texting, if it had hit her, she’d have been in the hospital.
The net is not as obstructive to your view when you’re right behind home plate. If you’re out closer to the bases, I think it would be quite a bit more obstructive just based on your viewing angle. As a fan, I wouldn’t want a net in front of me if I were sitting behind the dugout.
On the other hand, players have twice requested increased netting in collective bargaining with owners. They may want it as much for their own protection from fans, but regardless they are in favor of more protection.
I have season tickets behind the net, and even there the net isn’t a guarantee of protection. Twice this season I’ve seen someone brained with a pop foul (one paying attention, one not so much). Neither was seriously injured, but both of those balls were MOVING. Plus then there’s the always interesting possibility of getting hit on the BACK of the head because a pop foul ricocheted off the mid-level and is now flying at you from behind. Even if you’re paying attention and watching the ball, it’s damn hard to track even a moderately paced fly ball doing that - let alone a screamer.
The danger of getting hit by a ball is part of going to a baseball game. It’s not a big danger, statistically, but it’s always been part of going to a game. It’s a part of the game some fans actively hope for (less the “hitting” and more the “catching”, but it’s hard to decide beforehand which it’s gonna be). The area behind home plate needs screens - frankly, a hard foul that goes behind home has a much higher chance of hurting someone than any foul to the baselines. The distance is shorter, the reaction time is less, and there are a whole lot more of them.
Screening in the entire baseline would bother folks who don’t like to watch through a screen (and there are a number of those), and it would significantly reduce the ability of fans to interact with players during a game. There are always small herds of children near the dugouts between innings waiting for a chance to ask for an autograph or catch the inning’s game ball from a player. The ushers (at least at Chase Field) make sure they stay in their seats until the inning is over for safety, but netting would essentially eliminate that avenue for fan interaction - which is a great one.