Netting at the ol' ball game? Why not!

Do you want to provoke a serious argument with a fan of professional baseball?

This netting the last time I went to a ballgame in Gary, Ind., didn't stop me from seeing on-field action. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

If so, bring up whether Pete Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Or whether baseball ought to get realistic and adopt the designated hitter in both of the major leagues.

IF YOU HAVEN’T aggravated enough people with those lines of inquiry, then bring up the idea of whether baseball stadiums ought to extend the screens that now exist behind home plate to stretch all the way around the playing field.

Should fans have to have some sort of netting between them and the playing field to offer some sort of protection from balls hit into the stands? Is the act of watching a baseball game so potentially hazardous that teams ought to offer their fans some form of protection?

The issue, which has cropped up in baseball fan debate sporadically in recent years, was raised to a higher level last week when a fan at Yankee Stadium in New York got hit by a ball hit into the stands. The statistical desire to show how far and how hard all home runs were hit was used to show that this particular foul ball was traveling at 105 miles an hour at the time the fan was hit.

Does anybody pay attention to signs like this?

It’s no wonder she had to be taken to an area hospital for some medical treatment.

THIS ISN’T EVEN a lone incident. For it seems that on Friday, a fan attending a Chicago White Sox game at Guaranteed Rate Field got hit in the mouth by a foul ball hit by Brandon Moss of the Kansas City Royals.

Do ball clubs think this sign is adequate protection?

White Sox officials were quick to point out that the fan did not have to be taken to an area hospital. Although the Associated Press reported that the fan was seen publicly for some time holding a napkin to her face at the spot where she got hit by the ball.

Now a Royal, his foul hit fan in mouth

This particular fan was seated about 30 feet behind the first base dugout being used by the Kansas City Royals. Which is a prime seat, but also provides just enough distance that some people could be naively conned into thinking they are far enough from the playing field to avoid being hit.

Now as things are now at Guaranteed Rate Field, there is a netting that stretches a few dozen feet high right behind home plate. But once you move down the foul lines, you’re exposed. A lot of foul balls can come whizzing your way, if you’re not paying attention.

WHICH MAY BE the real problem. Too many people go to ballgames, but really don’t pay attention to what’s happening on the field. Meaning a line drive could turn foul and whiz right by their head – and they wouldn’t notice until it’s too late.

The first designated hitter

Now I know some baseball fans who insist the reason they don’t sit in seats right behind home plate (aside from the fact they’re cheap and don’t want to pay the prime prices for such tickets) is because they don’t like the obstruction of their view of the game that the netting supposedly causes.

I don’t buy it. That netting usually tends to fade out of one’s view quickly enough, and perhaps those fans down the foul lines need to be protected from their own vacuousness. Because the courts have previously ruled that line of small type ball clubs used to print on the back of tickets implying that people who attend games assume all risks of being injured doesn’t mean a thing.

Oh, Hell no!!!

I also know there are those who go to ballgames (usually on tickets provided by someone else, so they didn’t really pay the absurdly high prices of major league ball these days) who don’t pay attention. I’ve encountered too many of these knuckleheads who try to mock those people who DO pay attention to the playing field.

AS FOR THE idea of netting being unsightly, I recall when I attended ballgames at the old Vonachen Stadium in Peoria, Ill. Netting extended from one end of the grandstand to the other. All seats had

Maybe someday in Cooperstown?

something offering protection – although admittedly, the minor league grandstand only stretched from first base to third base and did not go all the way down to the foul lines.

This is something that ball clubs are going to have to take on just to avoid the perception that going to a ballgame is a hazard to one’s health. The reality is that modern-day stadiums with all their gadgets and attractions offer too many distractions. Perhaps netting from foul pole to foul pole is the price we pay.

Which I’m sure is a concept so radical for some people – perhaps even more upsetting to their concept of how things should be than my suggestions that it’s time the National League get off its high horse and realize the designated hitter has arrived and is part of the modern-day game.

And as for Pete Rose in the Baseball Hall of Fame? I’d sooner see Sammy Sosa there!!!

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Saying “yes” to DH an easier decision to make than picking a president

The presidential caucuses in Iowa are fast approaching, as is the New Hampshire primaries. Yet I remain clueless as to who I can seriously say I support for president.

Almost a 3,000-hit player due to DH

I think many of the Republican hopefuls are offensive, while the Democratic dreamers of White House glory are either clueless or ever so mediocre. Although I believe the Des Moines Register’s picks for president (Dem Hillary Clinton and GOPer Marco Rubio) are fairly safe and predictable choices.

SO AT A time when I feel like I ought to be making up my mind about something, I find my mind shifting to baseball.

Not only because spring training is rapidly approaching (Feb. 19 for the Chicago White Sox and Feb. 20 for the Chicago Cubs) and I’m anxious to have springtime-like weather, but also because at least baseball gives us an obvious choice.

Even though I’m sure my pick will wind up upsetting people even more than any political pick I might make – bring the designated hitter to the National League.

It’s about time that move was made and that the National League get off its high horse thinking it somehow is superior because it can’t get with the program that all the rest of professional baseball (except the Pacific League in Japan) follows.

FOR THOSE WHO are clueless as to the joy of baseball, the designated hitter was a measure created back in 1973 by American League teams (including the White Sox) where someone else hits for the pitcher – which throughout the history of baseball has been a spot in the line-up that weakens the offense.

There are those fans of National League teams (including the Chicago Cubs) who think this somehow is an aberration, even though I’d argue the Cubs’ play throughout the decades is the bigger aberration to baseball. It can become a heated argument.


DH extended career to Hall of Fame

One that will become even more intense in coming months because there is speculation that the National League will adopt the DH soon – possibly as soon as the 2017 season.

Baseball Commissioner Fred Manfred said last week the change could be made because there is a new generation of National League team owners – ones who think the designated hitter just makes too much sense to not have. In short, the old-liners who want to think they’re better off without it aren’t strong enough t resist the modern day.

THAT INCLUDES HAVING another big bat in the line-up, often one upon which the entire ball club is based around. As for those who think removing a weak-hitting pitcher in the late innings of a ballgame for a pinch hitter is evidence of great strategy, I’d say those people probably get excited seeing a frustrated ball player smash a water cooler.
 

Cubs better off if he'd been a DH

Will he ruin it beyond repair? Or just put a few dents in it that future generations of ballplayers will marvel over?

To me, at least, watching a National League game always feels like there’s a gap that pops up every few innings when the pitcher has to come up to bat. A gap that just doesn’t occur when watching an American League team play.

In short, all the talk of “strategy” offered up by National League fans is a batch of hooey! Way too overblown to take seriously.

SINCE THE PEOPLE who now lead baseball are determined to erase the differences between American and National league ball clubs to make one overall professional league in the United States, having the designated hitter in one league while denying its existence in the other just seems silly.

Now I don’t know if the designated hitter really is coming to the Chicago Cubs and other National League teams next season. I don’t doubt there will be some fans who won’t stop complaining until they’re planted in the ground with a headstone atop them. Even then, their spirits will probably haunt us to complain.


Even Hillary has a bubble-gum card

But it’s bound to happen. And if it winds up getting approved some time during 2016, it could be the most controversial action of the year.

Because I suspect that some people will find the idea of the Chicago Cubs or Pittsburgh Pirates having a designated hitter even more offensive than the concept of the oath of office being administered early next year to “President Hillary R. Clinton.”

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