Days after another fan was left bloodied at Yankee Stadium by a streaming foul ball, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday there is still no timetable to require protective netting for all 30 Major League Baseball stadiums.
As he has stated in the past, Manfred said that the league will continue to evaluate the issue but that different stadium designs pose one hurdle toward establishing a league-wide mandate on the issue.
On Tuesday at Yankee Stadium in a game between the Bombers and Reds, a foul ball hit by the Yankees rookie outfielder Aaron Judge – and which MLB Statcast measured at 105 mph velocity off Judge’s bat – struck a fan in the stands. WNBC-TV video showed the fan, a man, walking up the aisle after being struck, with his head wrapped in bandages and blood on his shirt. The fan waved to other fans in the video, and EMS personnel accompanied him, although he walked under his own power.
A Yankees spokesman said in a statement: “The fan was given first aid at the ballpark and received medical attention elsewhere following the game. The federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevents the team from giving more information.” Yankee Stadium does have protective screens set up along the third and first-base lines during batting practice, but the screens/nets are taken down before play starts. Citi Field recently installed protective netting along both baselines where the stands meet foul territory, and the netting extends past the dugouts.
“I think you’re going to see continued evolution by the clubs – extended netting that’s designed to fit with each individual stadium,” said Manfred, who attended MLB executive (and former Yankee manager) Joe Torre’s “Safe at Home” Foundation charity golf and tennis event at Sleepy Hollow Golf Club Thursday. “We continually are talking to the individual clubs about what they should be doing in each of their stadiums. I think the reluctance to do it on a league-wide basis only relates to the difficulty of having a single rule that fits 30 stadiums that obviously are not designed the same way.”
Jim Leyland, the former Pirates, Marlins and Tigers manager who also attended Torre’s event Thursday, said that he is unequivocally in favor of netting being installed in every big league ballpark. Leyland recalled that when he was a third base coach for the White Sox in the early ’80s, he witnessed a young fan get injured by a foul ball at Fenway Park in Boston.
“I don’t know which year it was, ’83, ’82. They had a really young child (who) got hit by a line drive at Fenway Park, right off to the right. Very bad accident. Really bad,” Leyland said. “So I do think they should have nets. That’s just my opinion. You want your fans safe. You’re always going to get the guy that complains, ‘I can’t see through the nets.’ Sometimes it’s a Catch-22. But I definitely think they should have the nets.”