A Calling to Major League Baseball

What is going to have to happen next to get Major Baseball to listen? This past Wednesday, Yankee third baseman Todd Frazier hit a missile into the stands in the bottom of the 5^th that hit a little girl watching the game along the third base line. This ball should not have even gotten close to the little girl in the first place.

Major League Baseball has been progressive with race movements, big contracts, bringing the game to other countries, and player safety, why can’t they think of fan safety at the same time. At Yankee Stadium there is a prompt on the screen in between multiple innings that says “please be aware during batting practice, warm-ups, and the game experience for flying bats, fragments thereof, and balls. If you are worried about your seat location, please contact a stadium official.”

However, sorry to the New York Yankees and Major League Baseball that is just simply not enough. And that is because sometimes there is just simply nothing you can do. The ball just seems to find people who aren’t paying any attention. It is just like the actual game of baseball where the player who doesn’t want the ball hit to him, will find the ball hit to him, that’s just how baseball goes. And, after all it is a fans game. That is why the players get the millions that they do, why the owners are allowed to jack up the ticket and concession stand prices, and build thier cathedrals for the team—it’s all because the fans are willing to do it.

The teams would make as much money as they do and sports wouldn’t be as big as they are if everyone just sat on their couches and watched the game on their TV, phone, computer, whatever, there just wouldn’t be any money. The fans do all of this, so why can’t they be protected when they pay a pretty penny to get as close as their wallet physically allows them? If you can pay sometimes triple digits per ticket to sit along the third baseline, you should be able to be covered if a screamer comes your way. You should not have the fear that you could get blindsided by a foul ball.

I can remember one game in the old Yankee Stadium at a game with one of my friends and his family where Jason Giambi hit a screamer down the first baseline and I was sitting along the back wall of the lowest deck and I feared for my life and ducked as the ball smacked against the back wall and whizzed by my 10-year-old head. I also always pay attention to the game, but there are thousands of people who don’t who pay that price tag to sit close. I’ve only got to sit within the lower bowl a few times in my life and the first thing I noticed was how many people aren’t paying attention to the game going on. That isn’t the fans fault, there are some people that aren’t interested in the game of baseball. Some people are just guests and look at their phone no matter what is going on. You can’t tell fans not be on their  phones when you show “the fans pictures of the game” in between innings and have fans text stadium authorities if you see anything suspicious. It is on the organization and the game of baseball to keep the fans safe and if you have the screens up and something happened, it is not of the Yankees or Major League Baseball.

Another example is this year in Cleveland when Aaron Judge hit a rocket out to right center field and the fans got excited that a ball was coming their way, as a split second later the fans realized who hit the ball and how fast the ball was getting there and they got smart, scattering like a hill of ants as the ball hits the silver bleacher structure out in the Progressive Field bleachers.

Now, that is the outfield and you cannot possibly have nets in the outfield because that would ruin the game, but you HAVE to have nets extending from foul pole to foul pole protecting the fans from blistering line drives, while taking fans out of the emergency rooms regardless of age. The fans will get used to looking through the screen because they will understand that if the screen isn’t there, they will end up like that poor 5-year-old girl in the Bronx on Wednesday.