May 4, 2014; Denver, CO, USA; Colorado Rockies fans prepare to catch a foul ball from the New York Mets in the eighth inning at Coors Field. The Mets defeated the Rockies 5-1.Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
The Colorado Rockies and the rest of Major League Baseball may soon be confronted with a fan safety issue: do you extend netting down the foul lines?
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The Colorado Rockies and the rest of baseball are likely at a crossroads (or at least, they soon will be) as the question of fan safety continues to be broached by commissioner Rob Manfred and others around Major League Baseball.
Things got almost to a fever pitch earlier this season when a Boston Red Sox fan nearly died after being hit by a foul ball at Fenway Park, and again this week when a fan sued the Red Sox after being hurt by a foul ball last season.
This topic piqued my interest when Jayson Stark sent out this tweet earlier this week about a post he was writing for ESPN.com:
And then later followed it up with this piece about fan safety. That piece is certainly worth a read, and it points to what you probably already knew: there are no easy answers. Players want fans to have more protection, fans are pretty split on the issue, and owners don’t want to ruin the fan experience for fear that the paying customers won’t show up.
Of course, there’s that whole issue of people not watching the game while they are at the baseball field.
There’s also the issue of terrible tragedies that occur at games that have nothing to do with line drives, like we saw last night in Atlanta.
Anyways, I have a lot of thoughts on this one, but I want to save them for another time — I’d rather hear from you guys, and essentially do what Stark did:
As always, please, tweet us what you think: @RoxPileFS or @BobbyDeMuro — and if you’ve got ideas that are NOT included in the options above, I’d love to hear those, too!