Over the past few seasons, we’ve seen hundreds of fans being injured or barely escaping what would have been serious injury from foul balls and bats flying into the stands at baseball games.
And now, the MLB is doing something to help prevent that from happening again.
All 30 teams will be expanding the netting around their parks to protect fans from foul balls in an effort to cut down on the over hundreds of injuries that fans suffer every year at MLB ball parks.
According to commissioner Rob Manfred, the new netting will reach “substantially beyond the end of the dugout.”
While a handful of teams are expected to extend the netting all the way to the foul pole, several more teams will be extending it “down to the elbow areas” of the playing field.
“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,” Manfred said. “And then we had a group of clubs who were already well beyond the dugout, and they are going to continue in that mode.”
