Mac, Jurko, and Harry were just talking about this the other day and I thought to myself we're one really bad injury from getting way more liberal netting. And, right on cue, we have one. It's really pretty amazing no fan has been killed by a ball or bat at a game.

I'm surprised Sheffield has never killed someone with a foulball.

Given the dozens of foul balls hit with no warning in the lower decks of the stands every MLB game, I'm frankly surprised more fans aren't critically injured.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

As an autograph hound I'm opposed to adding more barriers between fans and the field since it is already hard enough to get players to stop and sign a few cards before a game.

However we are now in the first season where base coaches must wear helmets, and they are paying more attention to the game than most fans seem to be.

Of course teams posts signs and make announcements that fans must be aware at all times of batted balls, but few seem to take this warning seriously as many will just chat away on their cell phones or focus on starting a "wave" rather than watching what's happening on the field. Kids certainly should not be sitting in close proximity to the field without being behind the backstop. And most adults should be paying more attention in general.

I only hope the we don't have a tragedy like hockey had a few years ago where a young fan was killed by a puck hit into the stands. Now nets are mandatory in all NHL arenas. Perhaps they should be required behind dugouts at MLB ballparks as well.

It's really pretty amazing no fan has been killed by a ball or bat at a game.

Manny Mota killed a fan at a Dodgers game with a foul ball.

As a fan, I'm against more netting between the players and the fans, it just seems like a bummer. And you're in INFINITELY more danger driving to the game. Or crossing the street. Not that that is any comfort to those who actually GET hurt.

But, then, I realize that I have never had the money to see that close, so such netting would never affect me when I'm at a game.

But I still think it's kind of lame. But less so than the stupid base coaches helmet thing, after a guy got hit in the NECK and killed.

I agree with most of the sentiments expressed above, and note that its often the fans who sit closest to the game action that pay the least attention. Unless you are willing to sit (glove in hand) with eyes peeled towards every play, it's best to take your children to the upper deck, outfield, or behind the backstop...anything else risks their safety. As my high school coach told me on day one of tryouts "baseball is a deadly game, and you enter my field at your own risk".

I do hope for the best for this poor boy, as this tragedy was not his fault.

If the NL had the DH, this never would have happened.

I do hope for the best for this poor boy, as this tragedy was not his fault.

I concur.

(Although judging by the shoddy write-up, he fractured his own skull.)

As my high school coach told me on day one of tryouts "baseball is a deadly game...

Considering the number of people who have played or watched baseball in their lives over the past 100 years, and the number of deaths that have occurred from playing or watching in that time, I think your high school coach didn't know what he was talking about.

Compared to other sports not involving motor vehicles, baseball is relatively dangerous. I personally know a kid that was in a coma for a week as a result of being drilled by a pitch, and Coolbaugh died just last year.

Still, I've been more wary of lightning strikes than flying baseballs or bats while attending games.

Manny Mota killed a fan at a Dodgers game with a foul ball.

Wow. I did not know that.

Mota foul ball story.

how about some sort of hard plexiglass on the top of the dugout that can be raised and lowered for autograph's sake. Something that would deflect foul balls that could hit people in the first and maybe the second row.

a 7-year-old boy who fractured his skull when he was struck by a foul ball at Wrigley Field was recovering and expected to live

Kids should not be near dugout. I hope this doesn’t result in more netting.

really? thats what you thought of when you saw the story?

wow!

how about .. I hope the kid is going to be ok.

The NL has to stop making pitchers bat.

Won't somebody think of the children!

From the story LimaTime linked to:

At least 300 people each year are injured seriously enough by foul balls at professional baseball games that they require hospitalization, estimates Gil Fried, a lawyer and specialist in sports facility risk management at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. But an exhaustive study by authors Bob Gorman and David Weeks found that only two people -- the boy Mota hit and a 68-year-old man attending a minor league game in Miami in 1960 -- have been killed by foul balls at a professional baseball game.

So that's two deaths out of probably a couple of billion (major and minor league) attendees over the past half-century. Amazing.

how about some sort of hard plexiglass on the top of the dugout that can be raised and lowered for autograph's sake. Something that would deflect foul balls that could hit people in the first and maybe the second row.

I went to a Japanese baseball game earlier this summer (Nippon Ham Fighters at Yakult Swallows), and I was surprised that the Swallows had netting that went all the way around, at least past the infield. However, the base of the netting consisted of screens that could be slid open and closed. They were open prior to the game and plenty of kids were able to get autographs.

I found it a little annoying, but if you're going to put some kind of protective screen up, this seems like the right way to do it.

Former Boston Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice once jumped into the stands along the first base line at Fenway Park to scoop up a bloodied 4-year-old who had been struck by a line drive, then rushed the boy into the trainer's room. Doctors credited Rice's quick thinking with saving the child's life.

That tips my HOF vote to Rice.

What's interesting is how injured fans badly effect the players when it happens. And I don't care that only two people died, 300 injuries per season is too many when they could be easily prevented.

When a young girl was killed by a hockey puck a few years back, the NHL quickly put protective screening up behind the nets

13. LIMA TIME! Posted: July 12, 2008 at 02:11 AM (#2853832)
Mota foul ball story.

Former Boston Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice once jumped into the stands along the first base line at Fenway Park to scoop up a bloodied 4-year-old who had been struck by a line drive, then rushed the boy into the trainer's room. Doctors credited Rice's quick thinking with saving the child's life.

And you people don't think he should be in the Hall of Fame.

The situation is worse in the minors, where the stands tend to be closer to the field, and since the seats are so much cheaper, you get a lot more little kids sitting very close to the batter. I was at a game in Colorado Springs last summer, right behind the third base dugout, when a line foul screamed into the next section, ricocheting off the armrest where a kid who couldn't have been more than seven was sitting. It didn't hit him, but he started crying out of fear, and his mom quickly moved him back a few rows.

What's interesting is how injured fans badly effect the players when it happens. And I don't care that only two people died, 300 injuries per season is too many when they could be easily prevented.

Ever been to a game where the mesh covers those lower seats? It's atrocious.

What's the difference when you sit behind home plate?

It's odd that someone wrote a story summarizing the state of affairs regarding foul-ball injuries just a few weeks before a major foul-ball injury occurred.

What's the difference when you sit behind home plate?

When you sit behind home plate, all the action is directly in front of you - you scan only 90 degrees at most to watch teh game. On the sides, every pitch moves a big angle, and every ball in play does. Very few plays come right at you. BUt I generally don't sit behind home plate because there a net in the way. I specifically ask for the first seats past the net.

Unlike Albert Belle, who intentionally threw baseballs into the stands...

This was Yahoo's headline for the story:

Boy fractures skull after hit by foul ball at first Cubs game

1876?

Compared to other sports not involving motor vehicles, baseball is relatively dangerous.

Only compared to the non-contact sports. Baseball is way less dangerous than boxing, (american) football, rugby, etc.

Boy fractures skull after hit by foul ball at first Cubs game

Yeah, that is an odd way to put it.

Boy: I have been struck by a foul ball! Curses! I shall inflict grevious injury upon myself!

I think he was actually nitpicking about an even less important detail, which is that the headline said "first Cubs game" instead of "his first Cubs game".

I thought it was interesting that the initial Chicago coverage was that the guy who ended up catching the ball refused to relinquish it and was almost jumped by the entire crowd, while the later stories said that a kind fan returned the ball to the kid...

it's a good thing that Mota didn't hit that ball in Philly, the DA's here would have charged him with murder. and no, i'm not joking. the DA's here charge everything, and then toss on some more charges for fun. it's why they have the worst conviction rate of any major prosecution office in the country.

I was at the game when Stapleton hit the kid in the face with the foul and Rice carried him into the dugout to an EMT. I felt sick to my stomach.

Manny Mota killed a fan at a Dodgers game with a foul ball.

Geez. Somehow, I'd never heard about that.

And of all people to have hit the foul ... Mota -- one of my favorite players as a kid -- was by no stretch of the imagination a power hitter.

Manny Mota killed a fan at a Dodgers game with a foul ball.

The most interesting thing about the lady who Mota killed was that she was a deaf-mute, which led to this headline in the Spanish newspaper, La Cebolla:

MOTA MATA MUDA

The situation is worse in the minors

I was at a Reading Phillies game when a screaming foul ball went flying past the bleachers behind the first base side and into the concession area where everybody had their back to the game and had no way of knowing that a ball was coming. The ball ended up doing a superball imitation in the photo booth I believe, nobody was in it or that would have been one hell of a picture.


I've told this story before but . . . I was at a Phillies game when another screaming foul ball went rushing down the third base side of the field. Everybody is leaning over the railing trying to get the ball and blocking the view of the next guy down the line. The ball finds its way past all these searching hands and finds the one forehead sticking out in the crowd. Thunk, the sound of that ball hitting that guys head was heard throughout the third base side of the stadium. I was 20 rows back and 15 columns over and I still heard it cleas as a bell. The ushers escorted him to the medical station, the guy almost instantly had a bump on his forehead that made it look like the ball simply implanted itself onto his skull and then the skin grewback around it. He looked like a white version of Buster Douglas. He was waving and smiling as they led him away.

I'm surprised Sheffield has never killed someone with a foulball.

(Although judging by the shoddy write-up, he fractured his own skull.)

really? thats what you thought of when you saw the story?

wow!

how about .. I hope the kid is going to be ok.

Gambling Rent and dcba, both of you are idiots.

First of all, obviously we all hope the kid gets better. Second, parents are responsible for kids, it is not the kids fault you moron, and don't pretend to know what I am thinking.

Also, this is a baseball discussion site. With all of the news and media coverage on the dangers of maple bats and discussion about what to do about it, my comments on netting are apt. I prevented this thread from being a prayer message board, where everyone feels obligated to out do each other with phony well wishes. If you want to wish the kid well, send his family a card.

Get over yourselves.

One of the scarier -- and really, really funny as it happened -- foul ball events I witnessed was at a AAA Sacramento River Cats game. Like in many stadiums, there is a back row of places reserved for wheel-chair bound fans. That row is, of course, on the same level as the concessions.

At the game the incident I saw happened, there was a group of handicapped folks -- maybe retarded; or maybe muscular dystrophe; I don't know -- in those places in their wheel chairs. My friends and I were seated maybe 10-15 rows down from them, behind the home dugout on the third base side of the field. Dan Johnson, who hits left-handed, was the batter.

Johnson ripped a screaming foul ball over our heads. We quickly turned around to see if the ball was going to ricochet back to us. Instead, it went straight for the handicapped group. I would guess that ball was moving about 80 mph as it passed an inch from the ear of one of the handicapped guys, flying into the concessions concourse. I don't think anyone got hurt.

The funny thing was that maybe 3-4 seconds after the ball wizzed by that guy's ear, he reached up to protect himself, flailing his hands over his head. Maybe you had to be there and have a few beers in you to know how funny that looked. But trust me, it was hillarious, 3-4 seconds after the ball passed by.

Manny Mota killed a fan at a Dodgers game with a foul ball.

Babe Ruth killed a fan with a home run.

August 19, 1920, Theodore Sturm.

Rifkin: Is La Cebolla a real media source, or is it like its namesake?