There are few things that can rock a baseball player as emotionally as the moment they realize a foul ball off their bat strikes a fan in the stands and appears to do some significant damage. The latest unfortunate incident of a fan being struck by a liner came Tuesday night in Milwaukee in a game between the Brewers and Colorado Rockies.
A woman at Miller Park was struck in her left ear by a line drive off the bat of Colorado’s Nick Hundley. The game was delayed about two minutes and medical assistants rushed to the woman and attended to her for an estimated eight minutes before taking her out on a stretcher. She was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
For those wondering, Brewers say the fan struck by a foul ball in the second inning was conscious, alert and transported to the hospital.
— Adam McCalvy (@AdamMcCalvy) August 24, 2016
Fans getting hit by baseballs is hardly anything new to the game and the risk associated and assumed upon entrance to a baseball stadium. Warnings on the tickets and on the jumbotron are required but merely are nothing more than providing legal warning of the dangers a fan may encounter. After all these years, baseball still has been reluctant to add a net around more of the infield, especially in areas where line drives can reach and do some real harm to fans who are either not paying attention, paying attention but also holding a hot dog or beverage, or paying attention but lacking the reaction time to act in defense or snag a foul ball.
In recent days, Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Freddy Galvis has spoken out about the need to add more netting to protect fans in the infield, after he was visually disturbed when a ball from his bat hit a girl at Citizens Bank Park. A day after Galvis spoke about the safety concerns, another fan at a Phillies home game was struck by a foul ball.
To their credit, the Brewers have taken it upon themselves to increase the length of the netting in the infield after a previous incident in which a fan was struck by a liner. The Brewers have netting that reaches the inside end of the dugouts on each side of the infield. As noted by the Associated Press, only three teams in MLB — Kansas City, Minnesota, and Washington — have netting that extends the full length of the dugout. It may be time to change that around the league before somebody else gets hurt. We know they will.
For the National Hockey League, it took the death of a fan to lead to a push to require teams to add expanded netting at both ends of the ice behind the goals. That was 14 years ago. It’s time Major League Baseball take a good hard look at how the changes in the NHL have gone since making its change. It won’t eliminate fans getting hurt during a game, but it should feasibly see a dramatic effect from fans being hit by baseballs and bats in the stands, where they should just be able to enjoy a game.
