Expanded netting was inevitable, and the White Sox are first to accept it
When it came to the last round of calls to expand protective netting, the White Sox neither led the charge nor dragged their feet, but instead moved along with the bulk of 30 MLB teams in doing so.
On Tuesday, the Sox had no peers when they announced the expansion of protective netting from foul pole to foul pole. The Rangers joined them shortly after, and it’ll eventually spread to the other 28 teams, because nobody wants to be the last one who willingly enabled some horrible trauma to occur.
The White Sox could have waited for another team to take the leap. It was during a Cubs-Astros game in Houston that Albert Almora’s line drive that sent a girl to the hospital, causing Almora to cry in the arms of a security guard on the field. One of those teams could have been more inspired to start it. But the Sox had their own scare when Eloy Jiménez yanked a foul ball into the stands on June 10, which the previously expanded netting couldn’t prevent. A woman went to the hospital as a result.
(The White Sox were showing a highlight of Omar Vizquel homering in 2010, so they only showed Jiménez’s initial flinch, and then returned to the at-bat after that package. The Nationals broadcast followed it all the way.)
Once teams acknowledged that they had a duty to protect customers in some part of the line-drive zone, it was only a matter of time until the rest of the line-drive zone had to be covered. The White Sox decided to be the first to cover the entirety of foul territory, rather than the 17th.
The only loss is aesthetic, and it is noticeable. In Paul Goldberger’s recent book “Ballpark,” he talks about a baseball stadium’s role in providing rus in urbe – rural in urban – as a respite for a city’s denizens. When you walk up the ramp and onto the concourse and the vast expanse of green spills out in front of you, that’s the term for that sensation. Granted, it’s not a park anybody can play on, but the illusion works. The screens messes with that, though, as a more heavy-handed reminder that the lawn is for them, not you. (It’s the same reason why I detest those moats that separate the luxury seats from the regular ones behind the dugouts.)
Also, those screens take some of the spontaneity out of fan interaction down the lines, like an outfielder thinking about a nacho, or throwing a cross-body block on an unsuspecting Guerrero.
But the forces that led to the last round of netting just will not relent. Exit velocities inch upward, bats shatter, fans are told to check in with phones and share selfies on the team’s social media properties. Even if you could somehow confiscate phones, the idea of the irresponsible, distracted fan would be a red herring, anyway. The most noble baseball fan will take their eye off the ball to check a pitch count or a radar gun reading, discuss scoreboard trivia, watch an outfielder’s positioning or a baserunner dancing off a bag, or get lost in a discussion about Mike LaValliere.
And even if somehow this magical fan never takes his or her eye off the ball, there’s also the matter of catching a professionally scalded baseball, especially one that might redirect off another fan’s fingertips at the last moment. Lucas Giolito doesn’t buy the average fan’s chances:
“In today’s day and age, you have a lot of young fans, and guys are hitting the ball harder,” pitcher Lucas Giolito told reporters. “I see the counterarguments like, ‘Don’t sit there,’ or, ‘Just pay attention to the game.’ Dude, no matter how much you’re paying attention to the game, if that thing’s coming in 115 miles an hour with tail, no matter if you have a glove this big, it could hit you right in the forehead. For me, being around baseball for so long, I think it’s a smart move because it just keeps people safe. I hate seeing young kids get hit, having to go to the hospital. It just leaves a sick feeling in all of our stomachs.”
And it seems like the players actually care a lot about the fan’s chances, even if they don’t show it to the extent Almora did.
When the White Sox played the Orioles at Camden Yards with no fans in attendance a few years ago, one of the things that jumped out to me was how quickly play resumed after a foul ball. The batter stepped back into the box even as the ball pinballed around empty seats, because it didn’t displace any bodies that needed to reset before the next chance.
When fans are present, players keep an eye on the results when they make better contact. You can see Jiménez follow it above, and others do it on their harder liners. It happens more than you might notice, before the camera cuts away to the foul ball, a replay, an unrelated video package like the Vizquel trivia, etc. Hitters have a lot of things to think about during an at-bat, and “Did I just brain a child?” is probably one they’d like to have removed from the list.
That’s why the netting creep was inevitable, and to my eyes and ears, the comparatively subdued reaction to this round of expansion suggests that fans better understand the trade-off. Maybe it’s because the expanded screens haven’t made the seats behind the dugout any less desirable, or maybe it’s because the “don’t bring your kids close to the field” argument falls apart after the second thought. Or maybe the sight of Almora crying in the arms of a security guard broke through the decades of desensitization from assuming the risks detailed in the fine print on the back of the ticket.
Baseball will lose a little bit of its natural charm when players bounce off screens instead of tumbling into the stands. It’s cool when the players expand the park to include the fans, and there’s a little bit of a loss in knowing Gordon wouldn’t have creamed Guerrero, that the Juan Uribe catch in Houston would’ve been a foul ball, that Avisail Garcia might never have high-fived this child.
It’s cool when players blur the line like this, and the loss of those plays are the ones I’ve reflexively bemoaned when internally processing endless screens.
It’s just not nearly as charming when missiles breach the barrier, and that happens to be the one that’s way more common. When you consider that baseball is the only sport whose players routinely injure the people who show up to support them, it’s amazing pole-to-pole nets didn’t happen decades sooner.
Jim, this reminds (for no good reason in particular since I’m not sure the word “baseball” appears in the book), but I read “Palaces for the People” after you pointed it out. Worth a read. The content focused on local issues is great. When he goes global he bites off a little more than he can chew in my opinion.
Excellent article all around, Jim. Bonus points for referencing Paul Goldberger’s wonderful new book.
Giolito is a thoughtful young man and his quoted statement is more impressive than anything Rob Manfred has said on the issue.
This is devastating. Nets all the way to the foul poles means streakers will now have to get onto the field via the outfield, and at Guaranteed Rate Field, there’s a good 4 foot gap between the seats and the wall. It’s going to become even more rare to see a streaker on the field, and I for one am appalled.
We must keep one and exactly one ball within the field of play.
Loophole!
I am 100% in support of the net. Yes, it messes up the rus in orbe, but people will get used to it in no time.
Great article, Jim. I hope that fan/player interactions that are unique to baseball – like players tossing balls to kids – can be preserved in some way with netting in place. My kid is still talking about how he *almost* caught a ball that Mike Trout tossed into the stands last year.
I’ve also been told, by the same sort of people who bemoan extended netting, that any adult man who brings a glove to a baseball game is a complete dork, so how’s that for a consistent and rational approach to a thorny topic?
If I don’t get used to the netting, I’ll sit in the outfield or the upper deck.
I say this only partly tongue-in-cheek, but I’m sure it’ll evolve to be less intrusive if at all possible. Maybe dark green or white is less distracting than black, etc. Maybe once the space elevator effort makes carbon fiber affordable, the screen will be effectively invisible and foul balls will cheese-grate onto the children like confetti.
I have sat behind the net a bunch at minor league games and didn’t even notice it. Heck, I grew up watching games through a chain link fence in little league.
Besides protecting the fans there are a couple of other good reasons for these expansions. One is the all the activity on the video screens, a savvy plaintiff’s attorney will argue that baseball clubs are actually distracting the park attendees from paying attention to the events on the field and are thus liable for the injury. This ploy has been successfully used against other business owners in Illinois for falls in their parking lots and on their store premises .
The other has to do with our park in particular. As eluded to in an earlier comment, it will prevented the knuckleheads who are seeking their 30 seconds of you-tube fame from running on the field and those idiots down the line (generally adults who should know better) who can not resist trying to snatch a ball in play thus turning a probable Sox triple into a double. It would have also prevented criminal attacks like the in father son felons attack on the KC coach which was another infamous event in Sox history which subject the team to national ridicule. People will bitch about the screens at first the screen at first but then get use to it.
It’s all a big scam by Renisdorf to save money on security guards!
I support the netting. I think legally once one team did it, it increased the chances of a lawsuit for all the other teams by a lot, so they had to keep up. One sort of unintended consequence I can see is that bleacher and outfield seats might climb in price because they become more desirable.
I really hope not. Those first row outfield seats can be had on ticket resellers for like $10-15 the day of the game. It’s really fantastic, and some of my favorite seats in the park.
Buy the cheapest ticket you can for the lower deck – and you can sit just about anywhere you want – except behind home plate! More irony!
Those seats will become more valuable when the Sox start winning, independent of netting issues – probably next year, coincidentally.
Outstanding analysis of this topic. I will miss some of the things in baseball’s inherent openness that will now be lost, but the trade-off is the right one. And I suspect over time (like in the offseason when they have time to tinker), teams will find a way to have moveable nets like the NFL does, so they can be lowered before the game, and even between innings.
The proactive person/people responsible for the expanded netting now should turn their attention to the starting pitching.
What will the creepy 50 year old autograph seekers do now?
Allow me to be contrarian. All the way down to the foul pole seems a bit unnecessary. The screen really does impair enjoyment, and substantially so. I just sat down behind expanded netting at Citi Field a couple weeks ago, and it was actually a worse view than the seats I paid for, about 15 rows higher. I do think netting should be expanded to reach seats where people do not have reaction time, but that certainly isn’t all the way down to the foul pole.
And to be further contrarian, I don’t think it unreasonable to expect parents with small children to sit OF, 20 rows back, or in the upper deck. There’s a good argument to be made that upper deck seats behind homeplate offer a vantage point superior to what you get down the line regardless, and your child is much safer. There are plenty of other endeavors where we expect parents to exercise due care on behalf of their children well beyond what we expect of adults capable of assuming a risk. I’ve not heard a reason why baseball should be any different. Your kid is far more likely to be injured in the car on the way to the field in the first instance, and I believe some Learned Hand-style risk/reward analysis is appropriate here.
In sum, I do think there are good faith arguments to be made that this is overkill, and I think it’s unfair that anyone who expresses this opinion is labeled a cold blooded child killer or macho-meathead. Not saying that will happen here, but I’ve seen it at FG and other fora where this is discussed.
I do not respect grown men who bring a glove to the game, though. And you will never convince me otherwise.
There are plenty of other endeavors where we expect parents to exercise due care on behalf of their children well beyond what we expect of adults capable of assuming a risk
I bet more than half of these foul-ball incidents involve adults making a trip to the emergency room. And we might need to stop some of these adults from climbing Everest or trekking into Alaska like the “Into the Wild” kid – no links, but it’s there on google.
And where else are you expected to be constantly vigilant for three hours at a recreational sporting event or risk being being labeled a poor parent?
Golf, hiking, deep sea fishing, boating generally, atv/dirt bike activities, trap/skeet shooting and archery…
Yeah the wife is always hoping I’ll go dirt biking with the kids, skeet shooting, or pulling out some bows and arrows – just don’t go to a baseball game!
Deep sea fishing – put a life preserver on and watch the weather – maybe 5 minutes. Lots of down time.
Watch out for ticks and exposure with the hiking, stay on the trails.
Golf? If only a baseball player could yell “fore” and have it be effective and meaningful.
Boating – more dangerous than attending a baseball game, even without the netting.
What you choose to do for recreation is entirely up to you, but without checking statistics I’d be willing to bet that there are plenty more injuries to children every year from hiking/rock climbing/etc. than line drives at baseball games. Two people have already died at just Zion this year. It’s just that our paternalistic instincts don’t kick in with respect to those incidences, or we’ve otherwise decided to tolerate the assumption of risk. But I don’t see anyone arguing that children shouldn’t be allowed to hike Yosemite because of the risk of a rockslide. Cos it would be idiotic to rob children of the experience, even with the potential that they may die. At some point you have to let your kid out into the world.
To put it another way, your ability to sit two rows off the field with a 2 year old shouldn’t automatically trump the ability of a couple thousand fans to see the entirety of the field with an unobscured view. Particularly when children can be seated in other, safe places.
If I’m not mistaken, scouts have been sitting behind netting pretty much forever in this game, and they don’t seem to feel their views are “obscured”, so don’t even try to go that route.
Also, don’t make a silly comparison between a financially/logistically/physically impossible task like putting safety nets in a national park to the relatively simple and inexpensive solution of putting nets in ballparks.
Like, this is seriously what you’re saying is going to ruin fan experience.
This is the worst thing to happen to America since the windshield wiper.
A flash in the bedpan of genius.
More like a splash, @Trooper Galactus.
Yeah, right up against the nets, it’s annoying. I got my first really good seats behind netting for the first time last year (5 rows up from the field) and it was bothersome. As I indicated in my initial post, when I snuck down to 1st row at Citi, it was even worse.
You’re taking a picture from like a dozen rows back. Apples and oranges.
Your point also may have been more effective without “don’t even try to go that route” sanctimony. And you calling it “silly” isn’t actually an argument.