(David J. Phillip/Getty Images)
“As soon as I hit it, the first person I locked eyes on was her.”
This is what Cubs outfielder Albert Almora Jr. said after a foul ball off of his bat hit and injured a four-year-old girl in the stands. Anguish and sorrow filled Minute Maid Park, evidenced by the heartbroken Almora, who fell to his knees, head down, in the silent stadium.
Almost a month after this horrific incident, the Chicago White Sox became the first major league team to extend protective netting to the foul poles at Guaranteed Rate Field. The Washington Nationals followed the example set by the White Sox and announced that they will also extend their netting close to the foul poles after the All-Star break.
All of baseball should be applauding the White Sox and Nationals for igniting this trend that will hopefully be adopted by all thirty franchises in the near future. However, this undoubtedly correct decision was met with less than unanimous praise.
I decided to take some screenshots of tweets critical of the White Sox decision to extend the netting. These are only three tweets, but if you look on Twitter, and get past the very original tweets about the White Sox lack of attendance, you will find many more that share the same sentiment. It does not always make sense to use tweets from fans, not verified accounts, but I wanted to show real, serious tweets from fans of the game. (It was also hard to find someone in baseball who disagreed with the decision).
First of all, to address the last tweet, it doesn’t matter if there have been only one fan struck by a foul ball or one thousand, any measure to protect fans should be welcomed by everyone. Also, the girl in Houston was not the first one. On August 25 of last year, Linda Goldbloom, a 79-year-old Dodger fan, died four days after getting hit in the head by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium. As a result of this incident, all MLB teams extended their netting farther down the baselines.
The article on the Washington Post website linked above sites a Bloomberg review from 2014 that states that “1,750 fans per year are injured by foul balls.” So the argument that teams should not overreact to one tragic incident is simply invalid. This has been an issue since the creation of the game of baseball.
In regard to fans having to see the game through the net, that has never been a problem for people sitting behind and a little to the side of home plate. The netting is almost unrecognizable when you are watching a game from behind it.
The main argument against extended netting is that it will take away from the experience of attending a baseball game. (I’m not even going to address the first tweet’s absurd claim about air circulation).
Part of the reason why attending a baseball game is so special for kids is the proximity to the action and to their heroes on the field. The netting puts a barrier between fans and the action and increases the difficulty of catching a foul ball, removing part of the fun of going to games.
The chances of catching a foul ball are hard to calculate. Different people have used different methods to do this calculation, such as Fangraphs.com, who calculated a 1 in 1189 chance of catching a foul ball. Although the odds are probably a little better than this, the point remains: we shouldn’t sacrifice the safety of fans because it makes it harder for fans, who likely won’t catch a foul ball anyways, to catch a foul ball.
The most prevalent criticism of extended netting is the reduced interaction between fans and players. However, slightly reducing this in order to significantly increase fan safety is an obviously beneficial tradeoff. Nothing is more important than fan safety.
Also, an idea to reduce the negative effect of the netting on the fan-player interaction is to implement netting that can be moved before games. I am not sure what the mechanics of this would be, but it would allow for fans to interact with players before the game while keeping them safe during the game.
(Harry How/Getty Images)
Although it is promising to see the White Sox and Nationals take the first step in ensuring fan safety, it shouldn’t take tragic accidents for teams to implement extended netting. Just this past Sunday, a fan was hit with a foul ball off the bat of Cody Bellinger at Dodger Stadium. After spending fifteen minutes holding an ice pack to her forehead, she was “taken to the hospital for precautionary tests.”
After the game, Bellinger said, “I saw it literally hit her face, so it was tough.” It is impossible to imagine being Bellinger in this situation, or Almora in his situation, and watching your batted ball hit a fan, feeling responsible for their pain even though everyone knows there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. Although fan safety is the most important aspect of this issue, we cannot forget the players’ emotions. If someone does, just show them the video of Almora in Houston. If we can prevent that from happening, we should do everything in our power to do so.
The next day, the Dodgers announced that they are also going to extend netting beyond the current MLB requirement. Kudos to Los Angeles for responding to the awful incident that took place during Sunday’s game, but it shouldn’t be a response. Teams should be proactive when dealing with fan safety. Phillies pitcher Jake Arrieta illustrated this perfectly when he said, after what happened in Houston, that “it’s ridiculous that it takes a 4-year-old getting hit in the face for us to have this conversation.”
If you look on Twitter, it seems like the amount of people who oppose extended netting is roughly equal to the amount of people who agree with extended netting. However, an ESPN fan survey found that 78 percent of fans agree with extended netting compared to just 22 percent who oppose.
Extended netting is not a controversial issue. Now it is on MLB teams and the league to make sure that fan safety is priority number one, and that they do everything in their power to maximize it. If next April rolls around and there's even one MLB team that has not extended their netting, Major League Baseball will have failed its fans.