PROTECT BASEBALL FANS FROM ADDITIONAL NETTING

The Chicago White Sox announced that they will become the first team in Major League Baseball to install protective netting all the way around the field from foul pole to foul pole, the decision coming on the heels of a woman being plunked in the head with a foul ball at Guaranteed Rate Field and a 3-year-old boy who was injured by a ball in Cleveland a few weeks back. 

This is yet another example of the powers that be in baseball attempting to reform the game by trying to keep the financial attention of a fan base that no longer knows how to keep its eye on the proverbial ball. The recent rash of injuries due to foul balls is not due to a problem in baseball. It’s more likely due to a problem in society. 

Baseball has existed for well over one hundred years and although there were occasional instances where fans have been injured by foul balls (the most famous of which being 1982 when Jim Rice climbed into the stands at Yankee Stadium coming to the rescue of a young child), it is hard not to see that there has been a dramatic increase in injuries from foul balls in recent years. 

There is an assumption of risk you take when you attend a baseball game. You take the same risk at a Little League game, a high school game, a Cape League game, and a minor league game. 

Until recently, people went to baseball games to actually watch two teams play baseball. The ball park was a place where you showed up early, watched batting practice, and if you were a kid you would rush toward the field to get as close to the players as possible hoping for an autograph from anyone in uniform including the umpire. The only thing that divided you from your heroes was a wall roughly three feet high. One more step and you would be on the field, and you would not be trapped behind a protective fence like you were at the zoo.   

My grandmother worked at the State House in Boston when I was a kid so we were able to get roof box tickets to Red Sox games each summer. The roof box seats were the most expensive tickets at Fenway selling for roughly $6.50. These seats surrounded the top of Fenway Park before the multiple additions of corporate boxes, additional roof level seating options, and the Roger Clemens-inspired 600 Club. The fun part about sitting in the roof box seats was that anytime a foul ball was hit up over the roof behind home plate, first base, or third base, a crowd of kids would aggressively explode out of each respective roof box section to chase the foul ball onto the black-tarped Fenway roof. Although the ball would often go bounding over the side of the roof sometimes a lucky, persistent kid would return with a coveted ball. 

Missi Cundari, who typically watches the Chicago White Sox just behind the third base dugout at Guaranteed Rate Field with her 10-year-old son, Dean, voiced her displeasure regarding the netting to Associated Press writer Scott King in the Boston Globe last week. 

“Honestly, looking at this makes me dizzy. We never felt unsafe. The ball boys would throw us balls and the players would come up and chat. This is terrible.”

“There’s definitely an impediment with the net,” said another White Sox fan. “It definitely changes the experience.” 

Former Red Sox southpaw and baseball purist, Bill Lee, probably said it best when reacting to the surprise of additional safety netting at Fenway during a live interview at the Old Timer’s Game in 2018. The Spaceman voiced concern about being in the possible presence of wild animals after noticing that the playing field was now separated from the fans by increased netting down the first base line. 

Baseball will not be ruined by protective netting, but it will forever be changed which represents a shameful acquiescence by those who have a responsibility to protect the integrity of our National Pastime. In truth, a ballpark is not a place to be distracted by your cell phone anymore than you should be while driving an automobile or cruising down a ski slope. They don’t refer to the game as hardball for nothing. 

There’s an old saying in baseball: Keep your eye on the ball. If you do, you’ll realize that that’s the fun part of going to the game anyway.