Almora overcome with emotion after foul ball hits child in stands

Chicago Cubs outfielder Albert Almora reacted as any parent might when a foul ball he hit in Wednesday night’s game against the Houston Astros struck a young girl in the stands.

Almora, a father of two, immediately put his hands on top of his head, then sunk to a knee on the ground as play came to a halt. Teammate Jason Heyward put his arm on Almora’s shoulders and Cubs manager Joe Maddon came out of the dugout to offer words of support.

All major league teams have extended the protective netting around home plate in recent years, but it does not cover the entirety of the lower bowl.

Give foul balls to kids, you monsters

If you weren’t on the internet over the holiday weekend — and you shouldn’t have been, it was a freaking holiday weekend — you probably missed the latest in a string of ugly ballpark incidents that are staining the fine name of baseball.

Yep, another grownup stole a foul ball from a kid.

In this case, the event was an Ohio State-Minnesota game at the Big Ten championships, and the adult and the kid were both headed the same empty row to chase the ball. The adult got there first, and snapped up the ball like a pelican spearing a fish. Here’s the video

The things people do for souvenirs….

Announcer catches a foul ball

Sign him up!

Announcer lives everyone’s dream by providing epic call of own foul ball grab

We’ve all imagined that moment.

We’re at the ballpark, the batter swings and the baseball is launched in our direction. We’ve played that scenario over and over in our minds, and we’ve even added some imaginary commentary to help describe how great our inevitable catch would be good.

For Marc Schwartz, the play-by-play voice for the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League, this typical dream scenario became his reality earlier this week.

Schwartz was on the call when a foul ball came flying toward his broadcast booth. Without missing a beat, Schwartz caught the ball and provided live commentary of his play.

The sort of thing that, were it not for the recordings, we wouldn’t believe it.

538: Foul Balls Are The Pace-Of-Play Problem Nobody’s Talking About

The number of foul balls has increased by 11.98 percent from 1998, when baseball expanded to 30 teams, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis of Baseball-Reference.com data. There were almost 14,000 more foul balls last season than there were 20 seasons earlier. In 1998, 26.5 percent of all strikes were foul balls. That share increased to a record 27.9 percent of strikes in 2017 and 27.8 percent last season, the top rates since pitch-level data was first recorded in 1988.
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For the first time since pitch-level data has been recorded, there were more foul balls than balls put in play in 2017 — and that trend continued in 2018.