One of the things that brings many baseball fans to the ballpark is the chance of getting a baseball as a souvenir. And for years, when a foul ball is hit to the outfield, the outfielder has thrown the ball into the stands so some lucky fan can get a souvenir. Yesterday (7/7/11) a fan reaching to get such a ball fell from the upper grandstand onto the concrete floor below and was killed. This was terrible and the fan’s family has my sympathy. But I am willing to bet that Major League Baseball will soon announce a policy banning players from throwing balls into the stands. This would be a mistake, a classic case of over-reaction which will deprive millions of fans of some of the fun of going to a game because of one unfortunate incident. Do you agree?
Yes. I mean, do fans often get hurt or killed trying to get these balls? I’ve heard of a few fights but I’ve also heard of some really touching stories, like a man giving a ball to a kid next to him.
It wasn’t really the “upper grandstand” - it was the outfield wall. Players are not allowed to throw balls up to the upper grandstand for this very reason. There will be an adjustment to the rules - and for good reason. There’s too much liability in throwing a ball to fans situated in places where they could fall a great distance. I’m still amazed there aren’t more safeguards in the higher areas of the stands at most parks.
Anaamika:
My son was the beneficiary of one such earlier this year.
Do tell?
I don’t think the rules will change. It’s really no different than the person not paying attention who gets hit by the foul ball or the person hit by a hockey puck that flies into the stands and dying. It is a calculated small risk associated with these games, and there is fine print on the back of the MLB tickets that states “Assumption of Risk” (looking at my Dodgers/Padres tickets for this Sunday). In this case, the fan chose to reach for the ball and lost his footing, falling to his death. I don’t think that’s any different than someone with way too many items from the snack bar slipping on some spilled beer on the steps and falling over the edge the same way.
I agree they (MLB) ought to do nothing about this accident.
At our local park (Busch Stadium II) I’ve been amazed at how low the railings are on the upper decks. There are many places where a typical adult would find the railings well below waist height. Some are even down around knee height, which would be perfect for pitching them over the edge.
Ref Yarster’s comment about hockey … After that little kid was killed by a puck a few years ago they erected those full-height nets across the ends of the rinks. Now unless you’re sitting along the sides you have to watch the game through a net. So NHL absolutely did change their infrastructure to reduce danger to fans. I think it too was an overreaction. But it did happen.
Speaking as someone who was at that hockey game, it was NOT an overreaction. The NHL had been lucky up until that point, they knew the danger was there and afterwards had even more legal exposure. The team, league, and hospital all came to separate settlements with the family. The player who took the shot never recovered and only this year was able to find closure with the family. Nets will go around the entire ice surface at some point, you can count on it.
As for baseball, every stadium is going to do an evaluation. The area in Arlington is one that probably always should have had a net or roof. Banning throwing balls into the stands completely just won’t work.
I’ve given away a ball to a kid myself.
Anaamika:
Someone who had 3rd-row tickets to a Mets rain-out against the Rockies in April gave them to us when the makeup game was scheduled to be part of an afternoon doubleheader. The Mets’ first baseman, Ike Davis, threw a bunch of balls after pre-inning infield practice into the stands near us, but never quite at us, despite my (13-year-old) son’s very obvious attempts to draw his attention. At one point, there was just one man in the two rows in front of us, and Mookie Wilson, the Mets’ first base coach (who seldom threw anything to the stands) rolled him a ball across the roof of the dugout. The guy turned around and gave it to my son.
As a bonus, after the double-header was over, David Wright (who happened to have been my son’s favorite player even before that day) threw my son his used wristband on his way into the dugout.
I don’t know that even the Mets winning could have made the day happier for him. Wll, maybe that.
It seems to me that someone dies in a fall at a ballpark every year or two. I can’t imagine why this fall would change policies.
My son and husband sat right behind Tim Russert at a Nationals game a few years ago. Russert got a ball and gave it to my son, who was really too young to care all that much at the time. My husband, though, was tickled pink and asked Russert to autograph it.
I don’t know - the area behind the goal is regularly subjected to strong shots that get deflected or just missed/went high as an attempt to score. The areas on the sides of the ice rather rarely have pucks go over, and when they do it’s usually a deflected pass or failed clearing attempt, but players are rather careful about it because they don’t want to risk a Delay of Game penalty. I guess clearing attempts can be rather forceful and the puck could hurt someone, but this happens so rarely compared to the amounts of game stoppages that happen when the puck hits the protective net. Risk is affected by frequency, and so the risk behind the goal was quite high, but I don’t think it’s all that high along the sides.
Besides, TV cameras get fuzzy images through the net. It would suck to have to watch an entire game like this! I think the broadcasters would oppose this quite strongly and the league would listen, even if it wasn’t the safest thing!
One?! Here’s one from 2008. Here’s one from 2010, ironically also a firefighter at a Rangers game. And there are plenty more.
This happens all the time.
Chessic Sense:
I don’t think Ronald C. Semone is referring to falls. I think he is referring to a person falling while trying to catch a ball thrown by a player.
Man drops daughter while trying to catch foul ball. (video)
Why do the hockey nets have to make for fuzzy camera images? Can’t they use clear net material (like fishing line)? Or better yet, couldn’t they fully enclose the rink with clear plastic up to, say, almost the top of the ceiling and almost the bottom of the floor? Then you’re seeing the game through clear plastic and it ain’t nothin’ but a thang.
I was at a North Stars game in the days before the nets were put up. A hard shot rose just above the glass and smashed into a woman straight in the gut. She was 4 sets away from me so I got a good view of it. She was in agonizing pain. It was scary to see how bad she was hurt.
Or even better, get a camera operator who has minimal skills at his job? I don’t know if this has seriously ever happened, but come on, how hard is it to know where to focus?
There are huge differences in camera-work quality between broadcasters. In general I find TSN to be very good, and NBC to be terrible.
I don’t have an answer for you, rachellelogram, because I have never really looked into it or thought about it much before now. The nets are rather transparent if you are in the arena and sitting behind them, but perhaps the nature of the way a videocamera works makes it more difficult to get a clear shot through it? Material properties (tensile strength) may also come into play in choosing a netting material (well, it surely does, but whether that affects transparency or not, I don’t know!)
As for the glass… I doubt you could make a piece of glass big enough to reach the ceiling without having to have a ton of seams/joints/support structures built in, which would be in the way of camera views (and the fans in the stand, of course). Even the “seamless glass” in arenas like the Bell Centre (that they are changing this year since they are stiffer and more dangerous for the players) isn’t one continuous sheet, as it has gaps in it which you see on TV as well. They also get scuffed and dinged and scratched, and that can often be seen on TV (and I don’t even have an HDTV).
A larger sheet of glass is also weaker, and given as how players are already able to shatter these things with a slapshot - or even a hard body check - I’d hate to see the cleanup from a broken sheet of glass that big, let alone image the time delay needed to replace it with a new one during a game (good arenas can do it in about 5-10 minutes or less now, bad ones take 20+!). I’d also wonder about air/ventilation for the players if they were fully enclosed like that, though I’m sure that could be overcome.
I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, but these are the “downsides” that come to mind with a few minutes of thought about it. There may be more, or these may be trivial, I don’t know. As it stands today, it’s probably a combination of cost and lack of incentive and very low levels of risk with the arenas designed as they currently are. Most pucks that leave the ice go into the nets or the player benches, or simply aren’t really going fast at all and no one has been hurt yet.