Spoken like a good lawyer. I still like the assumption of the risk principle. If you aren’t going to be ready for the screamers, sit someplace else. Once they start putting up barriers, it will never stop until the whole fild is surrounded by plexiglass. I believe the only fan ever killed by a batted ball in Fenway Park was a young girl sitting in the centerfield bleechers, hit in the head by a home run by Bob Tillman when she wasn’t looking.

I played and now coach HS baseball and throw BP every day and I am GLAD to have a screen to protect me/ When I go to minor league games and see how close and unprepared people are for the balls that may come their way, I cringe. Professional athletes hit the ball HARD! Assumption of risk is a nice term, but when some child or mother or father gets hit and gets hurt or worse, then teams will start to extend the nets. Kudos to the Braves for doing this.When I go I sit behind the net or far enough away to avoid a line drive.

The clauses on the ticket are meaningless other than to discourage people from suing in the first place. Assumption of risk only goes so far when you’re negligent.

I’d love to know how many serious fan injuries there have been from batted balls. My impression is amazingly few, and if the injuries are increasing in frequency, I’ve missed it. Can’t the Blue Jackets tragedy be fairly regarded as a fluke accident, without it becoming the justification for excessive risk aversion?

I guarantee that once barriers are put up in part of one ballpark, lawsuits will force barriers in virtually all parts of all ballparks. I worked a long time for the Trial Lawyers association…this is how they operate. And I’m sure the measures will prevent a few serious injuries and even a death or two over the next several decades. (Yes, I’ll be theoretically glad if that theoretical death prevented is me, or a loved one, or Craig). But the experience of attending a game will be diminished for millions.

I’d rather see better education of the fans about dangers (like mandatory features about stadium safety run on the scoreboard between innings; special designation of dangerous areas so there truly is informed assumption of the risk) and even helmets made available for adults sitting close and mandatory for kids is the low seats, then see ball parks turned into outdoor hockey arenas.

But this discussion has me convinced that this is exactly where we are headed. And as I look out at the rubber-surfaced park next door with the safety swings and the low jungle gym, I heave a sigh…

Of course Jack makes a lot of sense too.  Much more sense than me, actually.

“even helmets made available for adults sitting close and mandatory for kids is the low seats?”

Sitting in 95-degree heat in a helmet would ruin a game for me about 7,000 times more than having to watch the game through a nigh-invisible net.

Just sayin’.

Tort lawyers are boatloads of fun. However, nets are cheap, life isn’t. You can complain about the extremes, but a few nets aren’t that extreme.

I’ve felt for a very long time that creating more of a barrier between the field of play and the stands would benefit the game, and not just from a fan safety perspective. It bothers me to no end that front-row fans are not content with getting first dibs at pop fouls and balls tossed by players—they reach over the railing for ground balls (even ones in play) and occasionally interfere with fielders. I know they have a “right” to the ball if it’s destined for the seats, but to me the game should come first.

What would be so wrong if we put hockey-style glass up around the perimeter of the field? Fly balls that would have made the stands would still do so. Future Bartmans would not be able to tangle with future Alous. Fielders could still toss balls into the seats after the third out (or second, Milton Bradley). And as an added bonus, we could standardize the top of the outfield fences to make for cleaner home run calls.

Why stop at baseball?  I have been driving past a golf course and had a ball bounce off the hood of my car. If I had had my family in tghe car and it had hit the windshield instead of the hood, there could have been four, or more, people dead.  Living is a risk and in all the years we have been on the planet, no one has ever gotten out alive.

Jack - I go to 75-80 games a year, and I would guesstimate that I see five fans get clocked by line-drive fouls, and that’s in minor-league ballparks where few players are strong/fast enough to pull a ball foul.

Granted, most of the time it’s from the fan not paying proper attention, but unfortunately, it’s also usually a 7-9-year-old kid that doesn’t know that he ought to be paying extra-close attention when it’s a RHB and he’s sitting on 1B side or vice-versa.

Never mind what you see in major-league parks: Butterfingered never-weres deflecting the ball. I always keep score, so I always sit behind HP, which I think ought to be a requirement for anyone with an infant or toddler.