You can get hit by a baseball almost everywhere in the park. A home run ball can bean a spectator if they are not paying attention. A foul ball to the upper deck can hit someone. Some balls even go out of the stadium. Where to you suggest the netting stop? Once the lawyers are involved, it brings in liability in every situation, warranted or not.
The author is clueless and probably an ambulance chaser.
First, to his statement that thanks to congress gun industry cannot be sued when its products kill people is total BS. When a person legally uses a gun to kill a home invader, of course the gun manufacturer cannot be sued. And when a murderer uses a gun which performed as manufactured, again the manufacturer of the gun cannot and should not be sued. The murderer can. But if a gun malfunctions and accidently kills a user of a gun, of course the gun manufacturer of the gun can be sued. What is this ambulance chaser anti-gun goof smoking. After this moronic statement one has to take everything else he takes with a grain of salt.
And his solution to baseball?
The second reason is that the vast majority of baseball injuries are completely preventable. All the teams would have to do is put the kind of netting that now exists behind home plate down the foul lines.
Fans want to be close to the game. They want to get foul balls. I sit in seats partly down the line where there was no net and now there is. I hate it. And to impose this on other fans further down the line is not acceptable. This ambulance chaser is obviously not a baseball fan.
I suppose this next solution to stop the carnage on our streets and roadways is to ban cars. That would save about 40,000 lives a year. What a moron.
What would be the cost of installing the referenced netting in every place where baseball is played, MLB parks, minor league parks, colleges, high schools and even little league. Once the “baseball rule” is overturned, doesn’t every game at every level contain some measure of risk from which fans would require protection?
Nobody sits behind home or in between home and the dugouts because they hate the netting. Seriously, you don’t even notice it 99% of the time. For the most part the author is right about gun manufacturers, their liability is strictly limited and most of the exceptions are for places that sell guns.
Many fans and league officials worry about the intimacy of the game with nets. The fear is understandable, but it is unfounded by the experience of those teams that have been proactive with netting. Reporters who have spoken to fans in Philadelphia, Minnesota and Texas where they installed netting last year say the impact is minimal. Those teams did not lose a single season ticketholder by extending their nets. Netting in ballparks is like airbags and seatbelts in cars. Years ago it wasn’t required, but because of the dangers and serious injury and death, we decided as a society to impose reasonable safety requirements. Nobody thinks twice about buckling up anymore. Nobody will object to protective netting in a few years either.
In April 2016, the Marist College Center for Sports Communication polled almost 1,300 baseball fans nationwide about their views on protective netting, and here are some of the results:
54% of all baseball fans think more protective netting is needed.
77% of fans who bring kids to the games think more netting is needed.
66% of baseball fans said netting makes no difference in their enjoyment of watching the game, while only 25% said it makes watching less enjoyable.
A retired physics professor estimated that a ball coming off a bat at 100 mph will travel 50 feet in 0.35 second and 100 feet in 0.74 second. So a kid sitting just beyond the MLB’s “recommended” 70 feet of netting would have about a half of a second to react. No child can react that fast. No parent could. No attentive adult asking the peanut vendor for change or checking the scoreboard. It’s just too dangerous.
Gumbel also went to Japan where there have been nets up to the foul poles since the 1980’s and fan enjoyment of the game hasn’t been affected one bit. The Japanese love the game of baseball as much as any fans do. Japanese average attendance is comparable to attendance at MLB games. Netting hasn’t affected their love for the game of baseball one bit.
MLB Commissioner Manfred pays lip service to fan safety being a top priority of the League, but when are they going to take action? Players, coaches, fans, baseball journalists and sportscasters have all been calling for more protective netting. Last August, Freddy Galvis of the Phillies called on the MLB to extend the netting after hitting a young fan in the head with a foul ball: “It’s 2016 and fans keep getting hit by foul balls when you’re supposed to have a net to protect fans…Why don’t you put up a net and protect all the fans?…It’s something you have to put before everything. Safety first. Safety.” And Justin Verlander of the Tigers warned several years ago that it’s only a matter of time before another fan dies watching a game, as a teenager did in Dodger Stadium in 1970 after being hit in the head by a foul ball off the bat of Manny Mota.
Will it take another fan death for MLB to finally does the right thing and puts up nets to the foul poles? Let’s hope not. It’s time for the Commissioner to stop making excuses for the team owners who are unwilling to extend the nets, and to take action. It’s time for MLB to put up the nets. Like the car companies with seatbelts and airbags, it’s time for the business of baseball to do the right thing. It should be treated no better or worse than other companies.
You can get hit by a baseball almost everywhere in the park. A home run ball can bean a spectator if they are not paying attention. A foul ball to the upper deck can hit someone. Some balls even go out of the stadium. Where to you suggest the netting stop? Once the lawyers are involved, it brings in liability in every situation, warranted or not.
The author is clueless and probably an ambulance chaser.
First, to his statement that thanks to congress gun industry cannot be sued when its products kill people is total BS. When a person legally uses a gun to kill a home invader, of course the gun manufacturer cannot be sued. And when a murderer uses a gun which performed as manufactured, again the manufacturer of the gun cannot and should not be sued. The murderer can. But if a gun malfunctions and accidently kills a user of a gun, of course the gun manufacturer of the gun can be sued. What is this ambulance chaser anti-gun goof smoking. After this moronic statement one has to take everything else he takes with a grain of salt.
And his solution to baseball?
The second reason is that the vast majority of baseball injuries are completely preventable. All the teams would have to do is put the kind of netting that now exists behind home plate down the foul lines.
Fans want to be close to the game. They want to get foul balls. I sit in seats partly down the line where there was no net and now there is. I hate it. And to impose this on other fans further down the line is not acceptable. This ambulance chaser is obviously not a baseball fan.
I suppose this next solution to stop the carnage on our streets and roadways is to ban cars. That would save about 40,000 lives a year. What a moron.
Dave, should Tesla be sued if their car on auto drive does not recognize an 18 wheeler and crashes into it? Probably so since the sensor failed.
What would be the cost of installing the referenced netting in every place where baseball is played, MLB parks, minor league parks, colleges, high schools and even little league. Once the “baseball rule” is overturned, doesn’t every game at every level contain some measure of risk from which fans would require protection?
Nobody sits behind home or in between home and the dugouts because they hate the netting. Seriously, you don’t even notice it 99% of the time. For the most part the author is right about gun manufacturers, their liability is strictly limited and most of the exceptions are for places that sell guns.
Many fans and league officials worry about the intimacy of the game with nets. The fear is understandable, but it is unfounded by the experience of those teams that have been proactive with netting. Reporters who have spoken to fans in Philadelphia, Minnesota and Texas where they installed netting last year say the impact is minimal. Those teams did not lose a single season ticketholder by extending their nets. Netting in ballparks is like airbags and seatbelts in cars. Years ago it wasn’t required, but because of the dangers and serious injury and death, we decided as a society to impose reasonable safety requirements. Nobody thinks twice about buckling up anymore. Nobody will object to protective netting in a few years either.
In April 2016, the Marist College Center for Sports Communication polled almost 1,300 baseball fans nationwide about their views on protective netting, and here are some of the results:
54% of all baseball fans think more protective netting is needed.
77% of fans who bring kids to the games think more netting is needed.
66% of baseball fans said netting makes no difference in their enjoyment of watching the game, while only 25% said it makes watching less enjoyable.
A retired physics professor estimated that a ball coming off a bat at 100 mph will travel 50 feet in 0.35 second and 100 feet in 0.74 second. So a kid sitting just beyond the MLB’s “recommended” 70 feet of netting would have about a half of a second to react. No child can react that fast. No parent could. No attentive adult asking the peanut vendor for change or checking the scoreboard. It’s just too dangerous.
If you have any doubt about the extraordinary dangers fans face at MLB ballparks today, just watch HBO Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel’s report in April, 2016 called “Sudden Impact”, Episode 229. Gumbel went to a sports physics lab at Washington State University study fan reaction times. The results are sobering.
http://www.hbo.com/real-sports-with-bryant-gumbel/episodes/0/229-episode/video/ep-229-trailer-sudden-impact.html
Gumbel also went to Japan where there have been nets up to the foul poles since the 1980’s and fan enjoyment of the game hasn’t been affected one bit. The Japanese love the game of baseball as much as any fans do. Japanese average attendance is comparable to attendance at MLB games. Netting hasn’t affected their love for the game of baseball one bit.
MLB Commissioner Manfred pays lip service to fan safety being a top priority of the League, but when are they going to take action? Players, coaches, fans, baseball journalists and sportscasters have all been calling for more protective netting. Last August, Freddy Galvis of the Phillies called on the MLB to extend the netting after hitting a young fan in the head with a foul ball: “It’s 2016 and fans keep getting hit by foul balls when you’re supposed to have a net to protect fans…Why don’t you put up a net and protect all the fans?…It’s something you have to put before everything. Safety first. Safety.” And Justin Verlander of the Tigers warned several years ago that it’s only a matter of time before another fan dies watching a game, as a teenager did in Dodger Stadium in 1970 after being hit in the head by a foul ball off the bat of Manny Mota.
Will it take another fan death for MLB to finally does the right thing and puts up nets to the foul poles? Let’s hope not. It’s time for the Commissioner to stop making excuses for the team owners who are unwilling to extend the nets, and to take action. It’s time for MLB to put up the nets. Like the car companies with seatbelts and airbags, it’s time for the business of baseball to do the right thing. It should be treated no better or worse than other companies.