Pittsburgh Pirates to extend field netting as MLB mandates better fan safety

An estimated 35 injuries occur every year per 1 million spectator visits to Major League Baseball parks. One of the most widely played incidents came in September at Yankee Stadium when a young girl was hit by a line drive off the bat of Todd Frazier.

She was carried out of the stadium on a stretcher and play was halted for several minutes while television cameras focused back and forth between the young girl and a teary-eyed Frazier, who was visibly shaken. A hard object traveling at about 85 mph can be deadly, and Major League Baseball is mandating that fans be better protected.

The Pittsburgh Pirates will spend about $100,000 out of a requested $200,000 LECOM Park improvement package paid for out of a fund to which the city contributes about $140,000 per year. The fund is part of a lease renewal negotiation that took place several years ago. The city turned maintenance of LECOM over to the Pirates in exchange for the capital improvement fund.

Many of the major league stadiums have already made the move to extend the home plate safety netting to beyond the dugouts on both the first and third base lines where many line drive foul balls tend to travel at the highest speeds directly toward fans. MLB has included in their mandate that its teams do the same for its spring training facilities.

Economic Development Director Carl Callahan said the Pirates are still trying to figure out the infrastructure to make that happen before spring training begins Feb. 23. The Pirates have their home opener against the Yankees on Feb. 24. While the money belongs to the Pirates, a notification of expenditures comes to the city.

“It’s a fan safety issue,” Callahan said. “That’s the kind of thing that money is there for as they come up. Major League Baseball has realized that balls coming at that rate of speed into those areas are something that most fans simply cannot react to. The good news is that the netting is a new product that appears more green to mesh better with the backdrops of most stadiums. So your eyes adjust to it better than the black netting, but the Pirates don’t have a choice, it’s been dictated to them.”

Vice Mayor Patrick Roff questioned where this annual payment was coming from, and Callahan said it’s paid out of the general fund each year.

“It’s strictly a separate fund called the Pirate City Capital Fund,” Callahan said. “We add to it every year and they haven’t used it in four or five years, so there is about $750,000 in it right now. That was part of our obligation when we eliminated us being financially responsible for operations.”

This story was originally published November 29, 2017 at 2:18 PM with the headline "Pittsburgh Pirates to extend field netting as MLB mandates better fan safety."