SAFETY

There have been an epidemic of serious fan injuries this season at baseball parks.

Sunday's Cubs game was halted due to a fan injury.

The game was briefly delayed in the first inning after Kyle Schwarber's foul liner struck a female fan sitting just past the camera well on the first base side.

The woman was carried off on a stretcher and taken to a hospital. The Cubs said she was conscious, but had no further details on her condition.

''Oh my God, awful,'' Joe Maddon said.

Several fans around the majors have been hit this season by fouls and flying bats, and Major League Baseball has said it is studying the issue of crowd safety.

Maddon issued his own warning.

''Pay attention. I hate to say, but those are wonderful seats. Probably pay a lot of money for them, you're digging the fact that you're right there. I watch and and I see people turning their back to the field when action is going. You just can't do it, you can't do it,'' he said.

''But what I'm saying is, when you're at the ballpark and you're in those particular locations, watch what is going on. Don't turn your head away from the action. Every time a ball is pitched you look, you look and see, then you can go and talk. That's probably the best answer, to just pay attention.''

The problem with Maddon's advice is that it was fine twenty years ago but not today.

Tiger pitcher Justin Verlander went to social media to push for changes after a woman was hit by a foul ball in the eighth inning of a recent Tigers' home game against the Texas Rangers.

"More protective measures need to be put in place in all ball parks! Players are sick of seeing injuries that could easily be avoided!" Verlander said on the social media site after seeing medical personnel take the woman away in a neck brace, adding that Major League Baseball should make changes "before it's too late."

The Tigers said after the game that the woman, who was sitting behind the home team dugout, was hospitalized for tests but was alert and conscious.

Tigers third baseman Nick Castellanos said there was "no way" the fan could have reacted in time to avoid being hit by the ball of Anthony Goes’s bat.

He's in favor of increased security netting between the field and fans.

In July a class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco seeking to have Major League Baseball install such protective netting down the baselines. Currently such netting is typically used only directly behind home plate.

In the past, the license printed on the back of your ticket insulated owners from liability. The legal concept is assumption of risk. It presumes to have certain knowledge about the likelihood that objects can fly off the field into the stands, so the law imposes a duty on fans to take reasonable precautions for their own safety. The legal effect is if a fan  is even 1% at fault for their own injuries, they are not entitled to any legal recovery whatsoever as a matter of law.

But there have been a few court cases that have versed this old doctrine and imposed some liability on teams. Truth be told, owners do not want to aggrieve high paying season-ticket holders who like the unobstructed view from their close seats near the field in foul territory, and they believe these premium fans do not want something as foreign as safety netting getting in the way. But baseball owners are adding the danger of fan injury caused by the wave of new ballpark improvements.

Technology has become today's addictive distraction. People bend over their cell phones like nuns in a church pew. The world around them is lost; these people don't pay attention to where they are going (running into people on sidewalk, stepping out into traffic; texting while driving). 

And baseball owners, in order to attract younger fans, push team apps, stats, fantasy sports to patron's smart phones. They want fans to tweet and retweet during the game. They are fans to have "an interactive experience." 

The addition of large electronic scoreboards showing replays and information further distract fans attention from the actual game on the field. 

Twenty years ago people came to baseball games to watch a contest but also to have a social experience with family and friends. Sitting a park, with the ebb and flow of down time between pitches, allowed fans to actually talk to each other during a game. Perhaps, with the advances in communications technology, the average person is less engaged on one-on-one personal conversations than in the past. And that is the point that baseball does not fully comprehend.

A split second reaction time looking at a foul ball racing toward your head can be the difference between life and death. (The last baseball fan fatality by a baseball in the stands was in 1970 at Dodger Stadium). The human brain is hard wired to make instant reactions to protect itself from harm. Reaction times have been decreased for fans in the stands as in the case of Wrigley Field, the foul territory from the field to the seats has dramatically contracted over the years. Closer seats without protective netting equals fan injury. A distracted fan by his own phone or the video boards is a sitting duck in the stands.

But owners will say that tradition and the fan experience outweighs the rare fan injury. In the NHL, a young woman was killed by a stray puck which lead to the league putting in protective netting around the entire rink. It is possible to put a clear, transparent netting around the box seats to catch screaming liners or helicoptering baseball bats. But in the cost-benefit analysis, teams won't do it. 

Economic models show that the value of a human life is $3.5 million. Is it worth that much money to install safety netting in each park to avoid serious to fatal fan injury? Or do baseball men think the money is better spent on a veteran utility infielder as the 25th man on their roster?