Foul

We went to a ballgame recently and sat in some great third base seats close to the field. Interestingly  as we sat down and we all immediately encouraged vigilance in each other; we were in direct line from a line drive foul ball. This general knowledge among the ball fans spread locally as people in front of us and behind us also urged  caution. This is unusual behavior at an event generally deemed to be relaxing-- the mutually agreed upon threat.

A few popups and some soft drives came by but none in our section. Late in the game, however, a right-handed batter got in front of a changeup, hit the ball on the nose and pulled it hard foul. A screeching line drive fired into our section. The crowd gasped as it ricocheted off an empty seat beside a woman holding her child on her lap. She never saw it. The seat was the child's; had he been in the seat and not in her lap I can not imagine how the child would have survived it.

In 2002, 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil died two days after being struck in the head by a puck at a Columbus Blue Jackets ice hockey game. 
Three other spectator deaths have been reported in hockey games due to injuries sustained from a puck during a game. All three occurred at minor league games where the vertical barrier between fans and the ice is shorter than at NHL arenas.
After Cecil’s death, the NHL forced all teams to install behind the goals 18-foot mesh nets, designed to catch pucks that fly above the standard eight-foot glass barrier, beginning with the 2002-03 season.

Auto racing has seen a number of spectator deaths from cars and car parts crashing into the stands. In 1998, three spectators were killed at Michigan International Speedway when a tire from Adrian Fernandez’s race car flew into the stands. A fan was killed in a similar incident at the Indianapolis 500 in 1987.

 

Baseballs batted into the stand are known to have caused injuries, though never death. But it is not that baseball is not expecting problems. Any ball--or bat--that goes into the stands results in several stadium attendants rushing to the area to observe the damage done. It is as if they are professional bystanders who arrive to encourage and assess.

Broken bats are a newer problem. Tyler Colvin was the 13th pick in the first round who played on to the Cubs' opening roster in 2010. He was having a great year into September with 20 home runs and an .816 OPS with 395 AB.. Against the Dolphins, Sept. 19, he drew a bases-loaded walk and had reached third when Welington Castillo took a swing that broke his bat. The ball went over third base, and Colvin turned to follow the ball's path. He did not see the barrel of Castillo's bat spinning toward him. The sharp end of the bat stabbed Colvin's chest then hit the ground. It punctured a hole in his skin and left lung, which deflated. He suffered a collapsed lung, required hospitalization and recovered. But he never played at the same level afterwards.

In a study of 2,232 broken bats, the league found that maple bats were three times more likely to shatter than bats made with ash. Maple bats are also more likely to explode when they shatter, while ash bats more often splinter into small fragments. Maple bats became popular after Barry Bonds started using them about a decade ago and are used by about half of the players in the Major Leagues.

Two people at Fenway were hurt by broken bats in the last two years. After the first injury the players union claimed the players, in each of the last two rounds of collective bargaining, proposed that protective netting extend down the foul lines and even to the foul poles, according to major-league sources. The owners, however, rejected the proposals for the 2007 and 2012 labor agreements, citing concerns that additional netting would detract from the experience of ticket buyers in certain premium seats, sources said.

 

Japan's ball fields are completely encircled in protective netting. Why the Americans don't do that is a mystery to me.