August 11, 2003
By Bill DedmanIf you're lucky enough to sit in the closest seat to the action at this afternoon's opener at Fenway Park, when Pedro Martinez throws the first pitch to Baltimore's Jerry Hairston, you're sitting 53 feet 11 inches from the plate.
That is, you're a couple of steps closer to the batter than Martinez is.
No net obscures your view, because most of the new seats on the field are not behind the backstop. And no net protects you if Hairston swings late on a Martinez fastball and fouls one in your direction. With the ball coming at you at about 100 miles per hour, you have barely one-third of a second to duck -- if you don't take time to put down your hot dog and cellphone.
The odds of getting killed by a foul ball are pretty long: There's been one death in the history of Major League Baseball out of 2.4 billion tickets sold. You have a better chance of being killed driving home from the game.
But the odds are inching up, as the Red Sox and other ball clubs are moving fans closer to the field. The retro parks built in the last decade have tried to recapture the intimacy of bandboxes of baseball's early years -- parks like 91-year-old Fenway. And the new owners of the Sox, with millions in debt and the Yankees to catch, are squeezing jumbo-priced seats into every cranny of Fenway. (Those new owners include the owner of The Boston Globe, the New York Times Company.)
Already a lot of people get injured. The teams and Major League Baseball said they don't tally injuries, but the consensus estimate is a few minor injuries at each game, several serious injuries a year at each park, and one horrific event every few years.
Such as the night Cheri Williams lost the sight in her left eye at Fenway Park. The accounts payable clerk and mother of three from Framingham was at Fenway in August 1996, in the eighth row behind the third base dugout. That's about 90 feet from the plate, the same distance as the third baseman. About 1,100 fans at Fenway are sitting that close without being behind a net, more than at any of a dozen parks surveyed by the Globe.
Williams remembers that a Blue Jay was batting, a lefthander, and she made the mistake of looking for dinner.
"The hot dog guy comes, and I turn to get his attention, and at that moment the ball was cracked. Someone said, 'Look out!' But by the time I turned, it hit me in the face."
The Red Sox staff rushed to help her, and put her in an ambulance with a souvenir bat and the ball that had maimed her. "Mainly what I lost is my frontal vision. Peripheral vision is very low and not correctable."
After 13-year-old Brittanie Cecil was killed at a hockey game in Ohio last year, when a puck fractured her skull, the National Hockey League changed its rules. When the Bruins play the Devils tonight in New Jersey, the glass around the ice will be the same height as at every other arena, and a net sits on top of that, to protect fans from flying pucks.
No such changes were made by Major League Baseball after its only fan death, in May 1970 at Dodger Stadium, when a foul ball by Manny Mota struck 14-year-old Alan Fish in the left temple.
After the hockey death, Fenway didn't extend the net. It moved more fans closer to the plate. Starting last season, well-heeled Sox fans could sit on the field level in those two rows of $250 seats between the backstop and the dugouts, not behind any net. This year, for $275 a seat ($22,275 for the season), there are two new rows behind home plate (and protected by the backstop, which has been replaced but not enlarged). Down the foul lines beyond the dugouts, for only $225, the two rows extend toward the corners, where thousands of screaming foul balls have previously hit only grass and wall. Add in the $50 wall seats opening later this month on the Green Monster, and altogether the new Fenway seats will bring in another $10 million annually. That's enough to pay Nomar Garciaparra, or even to hire a decent bullpen.
If fans are being placed at risk, they're going willingly. Intimacy sells. All the new field-level seats are sold out for this season. The Red Sox marketed them with the slogans "Step right up to the plate, well, almost" and "After all, baseball is a game of inches."
Fenway may not offer the least protection for fans. Apparently, no one has surveyed all 30 clubs on this question. The Globe tried, but most clubs didn't respond. (The Chicago White Sox sent a curt reply: "This is information we do not discuss publicly."
So the Globe sent volunteers to measure parks where they were allowed. They found that Fenway has more unprotected seats within 90 feet of home plate than any of the dozen parks surveyed, and the shortest distance from home to the nearest unprotected seat, and the shortest backstop measured from end to end.
The Red Sox replied that they surveyed seven parks, and found three parks with closer unprotected seats than Fenway's 53 feet 11 inches: Atlanta, Arizona, and San Diego. The Globe called those teams yesterday, and they sent out staff members to measure. Atlanta came in at 53 feet, closer than Fenway's closest. But Arizona reported 64 feet 6 inches, and San Diego 81 feet. So it's clear this is one area of baseball for which reliable statistics are unavailable.
The Sox were planning the dugout seats when the hockey fan was killed. They took note, officials said, but spending a thousand dollars or so to extend the net wasn't seriously considered, because too many season ticket-holders would have objected to an obstructed view -- and less of a chance to catch a foul ball.
"Why would we extend the net?" said Janet Marie Smith, who helped design the first of the retrograde parks, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and now is in charge of stadium decisions for the Red Sox. "We've been responsive to what our fans want. Many people would prefer the unobstructed view."
The Sox did raise the wall in front of the dugout seats, to 38 inches from 32. They were looking for what they call "duckability," and Smith said she's certain they achieved it -- even if the attentive fan has only one-third of a second for ducking. So far, no one in the new seats has been injured, she said.
"Our question to ourselves was, are we getting closer to home plate than would be considered safe and conventional, using other ballparks as a standard?" Smith said. "We're seeking a balance between creating intimacy and creating safe conditions. You could protect yourself to death. You could stay home and watch the game on television, and you'd be absolutely safe."
Williams watches the Sox on television now. She didn't sue, or complain. But it does bother her that after she was hit in the eye, the Toronto player called the hospital to check on her, but she never heard from the Red Sox.
"I never thought going to a ballgame I would lose my eyesight," she said. "I don't feel I should have to risk that going to the ballgame. You're paying to go see them, so they should protect you from something like that. I know what happened to me is a rarity. But I feel it shouldn't happen to me. If I had just got a broken nose, and got a ball, it happens. No, I went to the game and lost my eyesight.
"I have no resentment toward the player. But the thought of taking my kids to a baseball game -- someone says, 'I got good seats' -- ha, what's good seats?" Stating their case
There are at least three reasons not to make any changes at ballparks to increase fan safety from batted balls, according to officials with the Red Sox and Major League Baseball. But they acknowledged that some of the issues cut both ways.
* People in the close seats are sophisticated fans who know to keep their eyes on every pitch, Smith said. Seasoned fans know to watch out on the first base side when a righthanded batter is up, and on the third base side for a lefty.
"Fans tend to use good common sense," Smith said. "No one wants to put themselves in danger."
But at Sox games last year, it was common for children in the dugout seats to stand with their backs to home plate to have their photo taken. Adults used their cellphones and waved at the TV camera or friends. Others split their attention between the game and distractions provided by the Red Sox: Wally the Green Monster isn't allowed to work the stands while the ball is in play, but vendors can hawk Cool Dogs and cotton candy.
* Many fans don't want to sit behind a net.
The net provokes a lot of argument. Some fans won't sit behind it. Others say that after a few pitches they forget it's there. The seats behind the net did appeal to some, selling out for the season at $225 per game. And the Fenway backstop is new and easier to see through, with a thin cord replacing the old heavy wire.
* A final reason not to worry is right there on the wall by the dugout seats: "Be alert. Foul balls and bats hurt." Or on the scoreboard where fans are warned about the dangers, usually in the second inning. If you just pay attention, Sox officials said, you can't get hurt.
Gary Stein has a respectful differing opinion about that. He's been an emergency medical technician for 22 seasons at Fenway. The worst injury Stein has seen from a foul ball is a fractured orbital bone around the eye ("several of those"). When he takes his family to Fenway, they sit in section 15, up in the grandstand, a respectful distance from home plate. That is the only assurance of safety, he said, unless the net is extended.
Why? Because the fan who is seriously injured is usually not the person the foul ball was headed for, but instead the person the ball is deflected into.
"You may have time to react, but somebody's going to get a hand on that ball and deflect it, and eventually it catches somebody in the face," Stein said. At third base, "Shea Hillenbrand is the same distance away, but he has a glove, and nobody is getting in his way."
A deflection at Fenway hit the unborn child of Lynn Mountford of Sherborn -- thanks to her husband -- but she tells it as a family tale of husbandly cowardice. No harm was done.
"In the spring of 1994, I was sitting with my husband and a couple of friends somewhere behind first base. I was five months pregnant with my first daughter. Somebody hit a line drive directly toward us and my husband eagerly put out his hands to catch it. Realizing at the last minute that it was likely going to hurt, he pulled his hands back and so the ball hit my pregnant belly.
"The good news was that the baby was fine. The bad news was that the jerk sitting behind me caught it off my belly and wouldn't give me the ball. All I was left with was the purple, perfectly formed baseball bruise on my stomach for a few weeks. You could even see the stitching from the ball." Liability varies
Fenway's medical staff handles about a half-dozen injuries a game, including heart attacks and intoxicated fans who fall down the stairs. A doctor, three nurses, and two EMTs are on duty to help in the medical station under the first base grandstand. Two more EMTs are with the ambulance parked inside the ballpark.
When the new seats went in last season, Stein foresaw trouble.
"I said to the nurse, 'We may have to just station ourselves down there.' But it hasn't happened once, and it shocks me."
When a fan is injured, the legal liability of the ball club varies from state to state. On the back of every Sox ticket, a 441-word note in tiny typeface commits the holder to assuming all risk from flying balls or bats. That warning may deter lawsuits, but courts have held that proclaiming that you're not liable doesn't make you not liable. At the same time, courts have said that baseball teams and other public amusements have a duty to provide a safe environment.
Still, a 1950 ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts still stands: "A spectator familiar with a baseball game assumes reasonable risks and hazards inherent in the game . . . It is common knowledge that one of the hazards to which a spectator at a baseball game is subjected is the possibility of being hit by a foul ball."
Lillian Shaw, who was hit in the head in the front row at Fenway in 1942, collected nothing.
Baseball's senior officials said this week they leave most questions of stadium operations to team owners, aside from monitoring lawsuits. "We have not ever gotten into advising clubs on safety from foul balls," said Sandy Alderson, executive vice president of Major League Baseball. "There are many areas in which we are centrally concerned with fan safety: security, crowd management, alcohol consumption. Our hope is that the individual clubs are going through that calculus and reaching the best balance between the safety of the fans and the intimacy that fans want."
So, how close to home plate is dangerously close?
Any baseball fan of a certain age, or young baseball trivia fan, remembers Herb Score, the Indians pitching phenom. In May 1957, he was on the mound in Cleveland when his right eye, and career, were crushed by a baseball hit by Gil McDougald.
And even young Red Sox fans know Bryce Florie, the reliever who was hit in the eye by Yankee Ryan Thompson's line drive in September 2000.
Florie and Score -- and the many other pitchers who were injured at a distance of 60 feet 6 inches -- were professional athletes holding a glove, not fans holding a beer.
Today's players and coaches are well aware of the dangers. The new ballparks for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Detroit Tigers, for example, have fences in front of the dugouts to protect players and coaches. (Anaheim added a fence after Mo Vaughn fell down the dugout stairs chasing a foul ball.) The fans who sit just behind these dugouts are unprotected.
And no coach in his right mind would stand in the third base coach's box, 90 feet from home plate, when Manny Ramirez is batting. Baseball's rules allow the coach to stand farther away, for safety.
Part of the charm of baseball is that every ballpark is different. Aside from the rulebook basics -- the foul lines meet at a right angle at home plate, the bases are 90 feet apart -- nearly everything else is up to the home team.
Over more than a century of organized baseball, ballparks have evolved in how they manage the risks to fans. Before the backstop was introduced, the seats behind home plate were known as the Slaughter Pens. The backstop was introduced in Providence in the 1870s, at first to keep fan mayhem from spilling onto the field. On the day Fenway opened in 1912, it had the first net over the heads of fans behind home plate.
Baseball may be a game of inches, but in the end the question comes down to how fans weigh their desire for being close with their assessment of the risk. Some may think that 53 feet 11 inches is a safe distance. Some may think about Cheri Williams. And others will think both things at the same time.
It's a little early in a Red Sox season to think ugly thoughts, but fans may remember a game last August. The Sox lost to Oakland, 9-1, but the scariest moment came in the second inning, when Brian Daubach, batting lefthanded, was outmatched by a 93-m.p.h. inside fastball from lefthander Mark Mulder.
If the backstop had been just 1 foot wider, the ball would have hit it and fallen to the Fenway grass. It would have been picked up by the ballboy and handed to a kid or gone back into the umpire's bag.
But this ball scattered the fans in the last row of Box 51, glanced off the ear of the man in Seat 2, and hit the side of the head of the woman in Seat 1.
Fans watching that game at home had heard broadcaster Don Orsillo crack a joke when Jermaine Dye hit one into the Oakland dugout, and had seen a young fan celebrate when he snatched a foul ball down the first base line. But the Sox broadcast didn't show the woman in Section 51 as she was helped to the nurse's station under the first base stands, with a bag of ice covering the baseball-sized lump on the right side of her head.
"She was lucky she didn't get caught flush. It would have killed her," said Paula Chepes of Lynn, who was sitting two seats away.
"We were watching. We saw it coming. We all ducked at the last second, but there's no way she could get out of the way. It was milliseconds. Milliseconds."
These seats are 90 feet from home, in the last row before the walkway that separates the lower seats from the grandstand.
So, Paula, would you like to switch seats? That gentleman just across the aisle is also 90 feet from home plate, but he's protected by the net.
"No! I don't want to sit behind the net!"
And if you had the $250, how would you like to sit down in the front row -- 53 feet 11 inches from home plate?
"Oooh! How do you get one of those?"