I’m just interested in gauging people’s feelings about the protective netting used in baseball stadiums to keep fans from getting hit by flying objects (mostly baseballs, sometimes bats, too).
I’m a pretty hardcore baseball fan when it comes to paying attention at a game. I’m also someone who is always hoping to catch a foul ball. My reflexes are pretty good, and I almost always have a glove with me if I’m sitting in an area where there’s a reasonable chance to get a foul ball. So my personal view is that I’d always prefer less netting. I don’t want anything getting in the way of my chance at that ball.
However, I’m fully away of how dangerous even the most innocent-looking pop fouls can be, particularly for fans who aren’t giving 100% of their attention to the action on the field. A few years ago, in Oakland, I watched a high pop-up come down straight on top of the head of an elderly woman who had no idea anything was even coming her way. She was noticeably bloody when stadium personnel escorted her away for medical assistance. Last night in Baltimore, I watched a little kid get nailed (not seriously hurt, fortunately) by a lazy pop foul that ricocheted off of a seat behind her. That’s to say nothing of the foul balls that are sharply lined off of bats into the stands down the first or third base lines, where you’d damn well better be paying attention.
How serious a problem is this? I know there was an effort a few years ago to provide more netting to protect fans. Last night, I heard Tom Hamilton (Indians’ radio announcer) calling for even more netting after a vicious foul ball shot into the stands. The reality is that the majority of game attendees are never going to give their full attention to the action since they are more casual fans than that. Is there sufficient netting at this point? Are the number of fan injuries at this point acceptable given that they likely aren’t keeping people from coming out to the ballpark? Should more be done?
What are your views on protective netting, both for your own personal enjoyment of the game, and for the broader audience?
Like you, my personal preference is that if I’m sitting along a baseline I don’t want the netting in the way. I also pay close attention and feel confident I can snag a ball or at least duck out of the way.
That said, the reality is I don’t attend enough games a year that my personal preference should be weighted too heavily. As much as I think everyone should intensely watch every pitch, I get that if you’re there with your kids or others who are only mildly interested it’s easy to lose your focus on the game from time to time. And of course there will always be people more interested in their cell phones than what’s happening around them. Even at a ball game. So while I’d personally vote NO on additional netting, I can understand why it might be necessary.
Protective netting guards against line drives; it doesn’t prevent popups from going over the netting and into the crowd.
Souvenirs are fun, but safety should prevail. Yes, fans should pay attention, but in the course of three hours you can be distracted and, after all, if the people in the stands had the reflexes of major league ballplayers, they’d be out on the field.
Should have had opaque netting to avoid seeing that travesty of a game last night
Camden Yards doesn’t seem to have an encumbering amount of netting. They do have weird Plexiglas panels in the box seats area in front of the aisles that I can’t figure out the purpose for.
There is at least one stadium (Progressive Field) where this isn’t true. A couple of years ago, the Indians employed canopy netting that prevents foul balls from falling onto the lower level seating area between the dugouts. I don’t know if any other teams have done the same thing.
I don’t like the idea of the extra netting but with today’s society of noses in the phone, it is probably regretably a very good safety measure.
I will disagree with **RickJay **a bit, I don’t believe there were many cases of injuries from balls before the smart phone era. But I will concede even less when the games were shorter and closer to 2 hours instead of 3 hours. So I don’t think the lack of athletic ability is a culprit. I do think the slower pace and especially smart phones are the major issues.
About a decade ago, I was at a spring training game at McKechnie Field, the Pirates’ facility in Florida. Now, the crowd at spring training games skews towards retirees with poorer eyesight and slower reflexes, but I saw three different people (all seniors) requiring medical attention after being hit by foul balls.
Well, gosh, I’d have to ask for evidence that’s true. People have been getting hurt by foul balls since before I was born. A kid was killed at Dodger Stadium in 1970, and I am confident he did not have a cell phone.
I went to quite a lot of games in the 80s when I was a kid living near Toronto and saw a surprising number of people hit by foul balls. People didn’t have cell phones then.
An article I was just reading on the subject reminds me that the organizations themselves are at least partially responsible for people having their eyes on their phones instead of the action. During games, the screens are constantly bombarding fans with messages about how to get seat upgrades, get their faces on the big board, win prizes, vote for song choices, and even report security incidents via texting or posting on Twitter. Probably a case of “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em.” But it certainly doesn’t help keep fans focused on the action on the field.
For the occasions I go to professional baseball games (a couple of times a year) I’ll avoid buying tickets for seats behind netting. At those prices, having to peer through netting is unacceptable.
As for historical comparisons, how often did hitters let their bats go flying into the seats in previous times? I can’t recall seeing or hearing about it when growing up.
Wonder if whopping fines for letting bats fly into the crowd would persuade batters to get a grip.
OK, this will be tough. But starting with that kid in 1970. He is thus far the only foul ball fatality. Isn’t that true? So in 150 years of baseball, a fairly clean record on this part, especially as the current netting wasn’t there until the 40s or 50s IRC.
I wonder if anyone has: Death at the Ballpark: A Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities of Players, Other Personnel and Spectators in Amateur and Professional Baseball, 1862-2007. This might be a good resource.
My observation of games starting in the mid-70s is the incidence of people getting hit by foul balls is up in the last 10 years and the incidence of broken bats and even complete bats flying into the stands is up. This is one more injury factor that I didn’t mention before. MLB may need to change what a legal bat is a bit. I understand the modern bat is fairly different from the ones before the 1980s. I’ve heard they are dryer and thus more prone to being shattered. Why more players fail to hold onto their bats I’m not sure about.
I can’t find anything on the numbers of foul ball injuries per year though. I see figures ranging from 1000 to 3000. But not annual statistics. I went to Rafael Espinal Jr. website District 37 - Sandy Nurse as he is the one that sponsired the bill to extend the netting at Yankee Stadium & Citifield. But a legislation search on extending nets and foul balls produced no results.
So I’ll stand by my statement but openly admit I am no researcher.
Some injuries are pretty serious. Just a few months ago the Braves settled a lawsuit from a 2012 incident where a foul ball hit a six-year-old girl in the back of the head. It fractured her skull in 30 places and caused traumatic brain injury.
I don’t think it’s due to “kids these days”, but there are lots of other reasons why the issue is more prevalent. I’d imagine that the frequency and velocity of foul balls is up significantly from 20-30 years ago. Teams have built and marketed ballparks to be more family friendly, so they are going to attract less dedicated fans that are probably not going to watch every pitch. Also, the amount of coverage these incidents get is much greater than it used to be. Just because you hear more about these incidents now, doesn’t mean that they are more prevalent. Ever read about the early days of baseball? It was a dangerous game.
That said, I’m happy that teams are taking steps to protect the most vulnerable fans. I’m willing to accept a slightly worse view, for protection of those around me. I’d also be highly in favor of requiring pitchers to wear safety equipment, before one of them gets critically injured.
The netting at Fenway Park was extended to reach the dugouts last year (it mainly covered the area behind home plate before that). I once sat in the second row just outside the netting on the first base side (so, between the end of the netting and the start of the Red Sox dugout). During that game a pitcher was hit in the head by a line drive. We weren’t much further away from home plate than the pitcher was. After hearing about the woman who was several injured by a loose bat and having sat in the danger zone myself, I was 100% in favor of extending the nets.
Last Sox game I went to a broken bat went spinning through the air back into the stands behind the first base line. People were jumping out of their seats trying to catch it. I think this was 2 years ago so the new netting probably wasn’t there. They seemed to let it fall then someone stood up with it triumphantly. That thing could have done serious damage if someone actually got a hand on that chunk of wood while it was spinning in the air. I was behind first base and have to admit I was a touch jealous of the person who got that souvenir. The dugouts are pretty close to the plate there, that piece of the bat was arcing through the air like a pop-up, a lot of foul balls could come back there faster. I don’t object to the netting. Anyone could be distracted for just the few seconds it takes to get a direct hit from a ball or a bat.
That only partly solves the problem. If i’m fast enough to duck out of the way, then the person behind me might get a ball square in the face. This is made even more likely by the fact that my last-second duck gives that person almost no chance to take similar evasive action.
According to this Joe Nocera article from May this year, an earlier Bloomberg piece from 2014 (no longer available online) found that:
The article also links to this video, which shows an experiment where researchers put people 70 feet away from a pitching machine, behind protective perspex, and fired a baseball at them at 95 mph. Even though these people were completely ready, not distracted, and knew that a ball was about to be fired directly at them, many of them still couldn’t get out of the way in time to avoid getting hit. And even the slightest distraction—not even something big like playing with a cellphone, but something like turning your head to talk to you seatmate—meant an almost certain beaning.
Baseball players themselves, pro athletes with some of the best reflexes in the world, sometimes can’t get out of the way of foul balls that come into the dugout.
One big difference is the type of wood used. In the past, bats were nearly always made of ash, but, now, many players use maple bats. Maple wood is supposed to be harder, but it’s also more prone to breaking – and, when it breaks, it’s more likely to shatter into sharp splinters. Bad enough to have half of an ash bat flying into the stands; even worse for it to be half of a maple bat, with one end shaped like a spear tip.
Those of you thinking you’re going to sit behind the dugout and catch a sizzling line drive, you’re almost certainly fooling yourself. Today’s MLB hitters are hitting the ball with more velocity than ever before. If you’re sitting behind the dugout, and a 100mph+ line drive comes at you from 60-70 feet away, you’re not catching it. You’re just not.
Back when I was working for a law firm that owned nice seats at Camden low on the first base side, one of a client’s employees took an errant throw to the face before the game started. Not as bad as getting hit by a line drive, but the partner was certainly worried for a while about losing the account.
