Ballpark safety is about keeping your eye on the ball

Team liability limited big-time at ballpark

By Karl Stampfl and James Janega | Chicago Tribune reporters

July 15, 2008

In the wake of a frightening incident in which a 7-year-old suffered a fractured skull from a foul ball at Wrigley Field, fans may be wondering what they can do to stay safe at the ballpark and, if they aren't, who bears the legal responsibility for such an accident.

Lawyers say the liability is with the fan, because teams have virtual immunity in most cases.

And how to stay safe? Stadium experts offer the same advice given by Little League coaches all the time:

Keep your eye on the ball.

The back of each ticket is printed with a 145-word warning that the bearer "assumes all risk and danger incidental to the sport of baseball." From a legal perspective, a big-league ballpark remains a corner of American life where most responsibility for safety belongs to the fan—at least when it comes to flying objects from the field.

A century of legal precedent from personal injury cases requires club owners to string netting in the most dangerous areas of the park but puts the onus on fans to protect themselves from bats and balls that aren't stopped by the nets. Lawmakers bolstered the principle further in Illinois, Colorado and Arizona with laws in the 1990s that underscored immunity from lawsuits for ballplayers and the clubs that employ them.

The White Sox and the Cubs—a team owned by Tribune Co., which also owns this newspaper—sought the 1992 Illinois law after local courts had found them liable for fans' injuries. Expansion teams in the other states asked for similar laws before opening their gates. The legal result is almost airtight.

"If you sit in the best seats, except behind the backstop where there's a net, you assume the risk," said Matt Mitten, director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University. "It's pretty difficult to prove that the team can be held liable."

In a sign of how hard lawyers have to push to get past the law's provisions, a California lawsuit in the '90s argued that a fan was hit by a foul ball because he was distracted by a team mascot. The argument worked. Most don't.

The risk hasn't stopped baseball fans from rushing for seats close to the baselines, Mitten said, putting them close to foul balls whistling by at speeds up to 85 m.p.h. Yale physicist Robert Adair said an adult needs half a second and about 50 feet from home plate to be able to move just enough to deflect or avoid a fast foul.

"I'd think long and hard before taking a kid down there," said Mitten, who last Thursday watched from the Wrigley Field bleachers as young Dominic DiAngi was hit by a foul ball off Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly's bat.

Officials at Children's Memorial Hospital said Dominic was improving Monday and may be released as early as Tuesday. But it wasn't certain, said his father, Peter DiAngi, who said more tests were required. Lilly visited the boy over the weekend; Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich stopped by on Monday, Dominic's father said.

Some 300 people a year are hospitalized after being hit by foul balls at major and minor league games, according to a study by Robert M. Gorman and David Weeks for their upcoming book, "Death at the Ballpark."

But only one fan has been killed by a batted ball in major league history, a 14-year-old fatally injured in 1970 when a foul ball hit by Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Manny Mota struck the boy's head.

Even so, statistics place baseball with NASCAR racing and professional hockey as sports where spectators are at risk of getting hurt and where safety reviews and tragic events have prompted stadium modifications. Fences have been raised at speedways, and netting added to hockey rinks.

At a 2002 National Hockey League game in Columbus, Ohio, a hockey puck struck Brittanie Cecil in the head, killing the 13-year-old. After reaching a $1.2 million settlement with her family, the league mandated netting to shield spectators in all its arenas.

Hockey commissioner Gary Bettman said the new netting would have prevented Brittanie's death, and physicians Adam Goldstein and James Winslow since have argued in the Internet Journal of Law, Healthcare and Ethics that it is feasible to prevent injuries in professional baseball stadiums by expanding netting there, too.

Currently, Major League Baseball is investigating why so many maple bats are splintering and causing possible danger to players and fans, said league spokesman Patrick Courtney. But he said the leagues have no plans to require more netting. Chicago Cubs spokesman Peter Chase said fans tell the team they prefer unhindered views of the field to the safety of wider screens anyway.

"I'm sure that this will be one of the topics at our fan-feedback seminar next week," Chase added.

Similar questions are being asked across town at U.S. Cellular Field, where 9-year-old Sox fan Griffin Cox was hit by a foul ball last month.

The boy came to the game early to watch batting practice from the lower deck with teammates from the Glen Ellyn Mets.

His coach, Ed Kemp, had a split second to see a foul rocket off a Sox batter's bat toward Griffin's head, and still remembers the loud, cracking sound the ball made when it hit the boy's head. Doctors found two small fractures on his skull but recommended against surgery.

It was the only serious incident of a ball or bat going into the ballpark's stands this season, said White Sox spokesman Lou Hernandez. The team is reviewing its safety procedures since the accident but it hasn't made any changes, he said.

Signs and public announcements before and during the game ask fans to remain alert for foul balls at both Chicago parks, and neither the Cox or DiAngi family would say Monday whether they were considering lawsuits.

Even after the horror stories, New York-based fan advocate Johanna Wagner of LoveMyTeam.com said more protective netting would rob baseball of its biggest asset: intimacy.

"I think it does take away from a big part of what draws people to the game," she said of the possibility of bigger nets. "[Baseball] is the sport where you are the closest, where there is the most interaction—and the possibility for a foul ball."

Tribune reporter Melissa Patterson contributed to this report.

kstampfl@tribune.com

jjanega@tribune.com

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