To protect fans, MLB plans to increase netting in 2016
A fan, who was accidentally hit in the head with a broken bat by Boston Red Sox's Xander Bogaerts, is helped from the stands during a baseball game against the Oakland Athletics at Fenway Park in Boston, Friday, June 5, 2015. The game stopped and the woman was wheeled down to the first base line to be transported to a local hospital. Credit: AP / Charles Krupa
The increasing frequency of fans being hit with shattered bats and screaming foul balls has convinced Major League Baseball to add netting to stadiums for the 2016 season, although specifics have not been worked out.
"Conceptually, the clubs encouraged us to move forward on this,'' commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday after the owners' quarterly meetings concluded. "There will be a change, but there's a little work to do still.''
This work will continue in January in Miami at the next round of meetings.
"There will be a new recommendation on that,'' Manfred said. "How it will apply to each club is a level of detail I'm not prepared to get into.''
Manfred emphasized that there are hurdles.
"A lot of things seem easy that aren't always,'' he said. "Obviously, fan safety is paramount for us. We want our fans to be safe in the ballpark. But we also have lots of fans who are very vocal about the fact that they don't like to sit behind nets.''
Two high-profile injuries to fans occurred last season at Fenway Park, where some seats are among the closest to the field in the major leagues.
Tonya Carpenter, who was sitting in the second row, was hit by Brett Lawrie's broken bat in early June and spent several days in a hospital. A month later, Stephanie Wapenski, also with a seat close to the action, needed more than 30 stitches in her forehead after being struck by a foul ball off the bat of the Yankees' Didi Gregorius.
"The toughest issues for us are when we have fans on both sides of the equation,'' Manfred said. "If fans want 'X' on one side and we're concerned about our fans on the other side, that's a more difficult balance. We're trying to reach an appropriate balance, recognizing that it's complicated by the fact that not every stadium is laid out exactly the same.''
Manfred addressed other topics as the 2½-day meetings wrapped up, including:
He said the terrorist attacks in France and the subsequent threats to the United States will make stadium security "a focal point'' at the January meetings.
Manfred announced that MLB and Fox have reached a three-year agreement on in-market streaming of games for the 15 clubs, including the Yankees, whose rights are held by Fox.
"The media landscape is changing very, very rapidly,'' he said. "It's important for us to make certain our content is available on as many platforms as possible. And I think this is a huge step forward for the industry.''
Fox owns 80 percent of the YES Network.
Manfred would not comment on the status of MLB's agreement with the fantasy website DraftKings, which along with FanDuel no longer can accept bets in New York after State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman declared both to be illegal gambling sites.
"I'm not going to comment on our correspondence with DraftKings,'' Manfred said. "We have an arrangement with them. We're still in that arrangement. When something changes on that, we'll let you know.''
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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