I have something of a confessional. I'm scared of fly balls at baseball games. Not completely debilitating scared, like I wet my pants at the crack of a bat. But for the most part, I'm uneasy pretty much the whole nine innings if I'm down either the first or third base line. When the rest of the section puts their hand up for a souvenir, I hit the deck. All which makes certain seats at a ballpark like watching an action adventure movie. Fun, but not entirely comfortable.
Of course, unlike films, people can actually get hurt watching a baseball game. In fact, over 1700 did over the course of last year's major league season, a figure both validating and unfortunately privileging my potentially irrational fear. This is, of course, out of the some 2500 games played per season, putting the injury rate at slightly less than once per game. So even though it's fairly unlikely to happen, it's not out of the question.
Longtime Oakland Athletics season ticket holder Gayle Payne is trying to corral that fear by reducing the number of ballpark injuries. To do that, she's filed what she hopes is a class action lawsuit for all season ticket holders in all major league stadiums. In the suit, she's demanded baseball extend its safety netting from foul pole to foul pole, far extending the current safety restraints largely protecting those behind home plate. This would keep those along the first and third base lines from screamers, line drives that shoot off the bat like a cannonball. It would also keep those same fans from ever catching a foul ball, one of the few childhood fantasies in life that can actually be realized. Add to that, many more fans, especially those paying the most for their seats, would watch the game through a fairly tightly knit grid, obstructing the pure and unadulterated view of any field of dreams. Now we do experience many of life's great spectacles though a protective lens -- tigers in a zoo comes to mind -- but it's questionable whether baseballs and big cats belong in the same category.
Major League Baseball and its leadership has moved quite slowly on this affair, hoping to push any decisions to individual teams and parks. They've long used the "baseball rule" as their defense -- the idea that fans enter at their own risk. That's why you see more warning signs at stadiums than you do on hot cup of McDonalds coffee. And, logic dictates, if you're really worried about it, sit in the upper deck, where foul balls dare not tread. That's where I usually sit, which also happens to be where the cheapest seats are.
The issue has become more acute in recent months with some high profile tragedies, including a women being carried out of Fenway Park on a stretcher after being hit with a broken bat. So while there's been hardly any deaths at major league parks from fly balls or bats -- one in history, according the authoritative "death at the ballpark" blog, the number of injuries is on the rise, and they disproportionately involve children. Then there's all the accidents at minor league parks, where there is no upper deck seating, and college games, and the numbers start to add up.
So what's the answer? Should baseball better protect its fans, and itself from a wave of lawsuits? My answer is both biased and logical, if not at the same time. Personally, I say yes, please put up those nets. I've wanted to watch a game without flinching my entire life, to experience baseball as it should be -- carefree and conversational. We all make choices about our personal risk and safety, like whether to run with the bulls or juggle chain saws. But watching a ball game shouldn't be one of those quandaries. But more importantly, and logically, baseball should find a solution because they eventually will have to. For a sport that relies deeply on locally driven gate revenues, particularly given a more tenuous place as a national pastime, baseball needs to make its live experience as palatable as possible. So while the purists might want better views and a souvenir, us casual fans that spend half the game staring at a cell phone and talking to our kids will turn more and more to soccer, where no one gets hurt by a ball and games end in two hours. Baseball can cling to tradition, a construct that typically ensures your future will be dimmer than your past. And the world might pass them by, all so the game looks like it did in 1912, when you might also die from the plague.
Such is the price of progress. It's cheaper than the alternative. And, like a safer ballpark, it's less frightening as well.