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MLB under pressure to address fan safety regulations
Sunday’s Say Hey, Baseball includes a call for new safety procedures, Miguel Cabrera’s historic season, and the harm of pitcher wins. Subscribe for your daily Say Hey!
Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports
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The last two innings of Friday’s Tigers-Rangers game illuminated an oft-overlooked issue in MLB. During the eighth inning, Tigers center fielder Anthony Gose fouled a pitch behind the dugout, inadvertently striking a young woman on the side of the head. The fan fell unconscious moments later and was assisted by EMT responders within several minutes. In the ninth inning, Adrian Beltre splintered his bat on a pitch from Rangers right-hander Neftali Feliz. A fraction of the bat landed in the same section behind the dugout and struck another bystander.
Tigers starter Justin Verlander and third baseman Nick Castellanos were some of the first to speak out after the incidents. "If today doesn’t get nets up, what else is it going to take?" Castellanos asked the media following the game, citing further accidents that had injured and killed fans in Boston and Pawtucket. Verlander suggested MLB’s head honchos use sabermetrics to figure out the chances of dangerous, hard-hit line drives landing near the dugout, where fans in the lower deck might get hit.
Preventing these kinds of accidents requires one of two simple adjustments: either fans can start paying closer attention to the game, or MLB can begin installing nets around the foul lines. The problem with the first solution is that a hard-hit foul ball can ricochet through a crowd faster than most fans can react to it, no matter how closely they happen to be observing the game. Or, as Castellanos pointed out, the victim might be too young to take such preventative measures. Tigers general manager Al Avila said the decision to install netting is currently left to the discretion of each team. Even if MLB doesn’t instate a leaguewide policy on fan safety, it shouldn’t take more accidents to prod teams into making necessary changes on their own.
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