Boston Red Sox catcher Christian Vazquez.Photo: Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty
Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred toldCNBCthat the improved netting will now stretch “substantially beyond the end of the dugout,” and will be in place when baseball season kicks off in March.
Manfred said that about seven or eight teams will have netting that goes all the way down to the foul poles, while 15 teams will put it “down to the elbow areas of the playing fields.”
“The reason for that is when the stadiums jut away you have to run cables over the playing field to go all the way to the foul pole, so it’s very difficult structurally to do,” he told CNBC. “And then we had a group of clubs who were already well beyond the dugout, and they are going to continue in that mode.”
He added that the improvements are not the result of an official rule requiring the teams to do so, but that all 30 teams met with the league office and the decision was agreed upon.
“There was no rule passed or anything like that. We just went out, talked to the clubs, made the case that extending netting was the thing to do, and the clubs individually responded in a positive way,” he said.
Courtesy Goldbloom Family
In the months after, Goldbloom’s daughter Jana Brody repeatedly called for MLB teams to extend their netting vertically.
She sustained a skull fracture with subdural bleeding, bruising and swelling, and also suffered a seizure upon being hospitalized, her family’s attorney said later.
“There’s a lot of kids coming to the games — young kids who want to watch us play,” Bryant toldESPN. “And the balls come in hard. I mean, the speed of the game is quick, and I think any safety measure we can take to make sure that the fans are safe, we should do it.”
David J Phillip/AP/REX/Shutterstock
Star first baseman Cody Bellinger hit the ball that struck the fan and said after the game that it would be a “smart decision” to further extend the netting.
source: people.com
