 When it comes to safety, much of what we do in America, particularly in corporate America, is reactive rather than proactive. Baseball is reacting to an incident last September at Yankee Stadium in New York in which a 1-year-old girl was hit in the face by a foul ball and suffered serious injuries.
Also last season, a man was hit in the eye as he watched the Cubs play at Wrigley Field in Chicago. He’s suing M.L.B., arguing that not enough is done to protect fans.
Regrettably, accidents happen every season; fortunately, most are less horrific. Fans are hit by flying balls and bats, vendors slam into people as they go through the aisles, birds send droppings into the crowd, and every few years a fan manages to tumble out of an upper deck.
The issue for ball clubs and fans this season isn’t safety, per se, but rather at what point safety measures become too extreme.
Every baseball field has a screen behind home plate to protect fans from balls fouled straight back at a high rate of speed. Savvy fans take this into account when buying tickets: some don’t mind watching the game through netting, others do whatever they can to avoid it. Until now, the netted zone has been small enough to keep everyone happy.
In the new arrangement nets extend at least to the end of each dugout and at many facilities even farther. Fans in choice seats are now caged. They can’t interact with players as they used to, they are blocked from grabbing most foul balls and their view is compromised by nets and support structures.
M.L.B. says new nets use finer strands that don’t interfere with viewing as much as the older style. But a hail of blog posts from fans who were surprised and annoyed by the set-up at spring training this season would seem to refute that.
What riles serious fans is that their experience at ballgames is being compromised, in large part, by the behavior of more casual attendees. Sit at a game nowadays and you’ll see that half the crowd is distracted by mobile devices. It’s no wonder they’re at risk.
There are also more parents with infants in their arms. Why? You wouldn’t see a 1-year-old in a theater with a T-shirt proclaiming, “My First Opera.” Yet, lap-babies are increasingly present, and in danger, at baseball games.
Teams could easily require that everyone have a ticket, regardless of age, which would immediately reduce the number of vulnerable infants at games. They could also place an age and/or height requirement on certain seats — just as amusement parks do with risky rides.
On HBO’s “Real Sports” this week, Bryant Gumbel compiled dramatic footage of people who have been struck by baseballs at M.L.B. games. I agree with Gumbel that fans should be protected, but I fear that nets, as erected this season, will spoil things for those who don’t mind the risk.
Golf faces an almost identical problem when fans line the fairways, but no one is proposing protective nets for spectators who elect to stand where they do.
Like it or not, though, extended nets are likely to remain at stadiums. No one wants to argue too strongly against safety — not me, and certainly not litigation-fearing baseball teams.
But if the high cost of tickets, exorbitant prices for food and drink, rowdy fans and slow pace of play aren’t enough to drive many fans to their flatscreen, HD-TVs at home, maybe nets will do the trick.
(c) Peter Funt. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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