Re: MLB 2019: Every Year at Playoff Time, The Dodgers Find A Way to Choke.
The Moral Panic Circus is starting up again, about netting. It's got everything: an imperiled child, a dead mother; many tubs will be thumped before this round is over.
Good thing there are no real problems in the country to drum up action about.
I thought you were one of the posters lecturing me that just because there are larger problems to solve, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to fix all problems?
All teasing aside, there really is no reason in the world that people are still getting crushed by baseballs along the foul ball lines. First, the technology (netting) exists and has been used for eternity. The reason we have it behind home plate is to prevent people from getting crushed by foul balls. The myth we keep telling ourselves is that only those seats behind home plate are in a position where we can't defend ourselves.
I think I posted this a couple of years ago, but one of the Universities out west (maybe Oregon or Washington) has a sports science division. They did a study on the dangers of foul balls, and Bryant Gumbel had them on his HBO show.
Basically, they set up a plexiglass wall a certain distance from a pitching machine, approximately the same distance as someone sitting in the first few rows of the first section of seats beyond the outfield end of the dugout. They then had volunteers sit in a chair behind the wall as the pitching machine shot baseballs at them at a rate of about 95-100 mph, about the same velocity as a baseball coming off a bat when lined foul.
Even those people who knew the ball was coming and were staring at the pitching machine had little or no shot of ducking or fending off the ball. If you were talking to a friend but still paying attention to the game, or eating or drinking something, you'd be in the ambulance before you knew what happened.
If you sit in those seats without netting in front of you, the only reason you haven't had your face caved in by a line shot is the bullet has missed you. You have no control over it.
