Major League Baseball Fan Foul Ball Fatalities in Context: Soccer, Tour de France and Racing FAR More Dangerous to Fans than Foul Balls

After Andy Zlotnick commented on my Twitter feed and compared baseball to the X-Games and “Reality TV”, as he did in the HBO Real Sports episode I discussed in an earlier two posts (PART I and PART II), I started to wonder if baseball really is as dangerous to spectators and players as people keep claiming. The counterargument is predicated on the idea that 1750 fans are injured every year at Major League Baseball games. That’s the number Bryant Gumbel indicated in Real Sports and it’s the number a lot of others also misrepresent. They assume that is the number of fans hit by balls and bats each season. It’s actually the number of fans injured in relation to a ball or bat. That is, fans often injure themselves going for a ball or ducking out of the way of an errant bat.

All this got me to wondering. As it turns out baseball is one of the safest for spectators and participants. With a rounded up number of 2000 fans injured in relation to a foul ball or bat, and considering one fan in 100+ years has died, I started looking at other fan fatalities in other sports.

THE DEADLIEST SPORTS

Soccer is by far the most deadly professional sport. It has riots. Over 800 people have died over the last 20 years as a result of hatred between fans who’ve gone on to pummel one another to death after a match. Baseball fans tend to riot only when their team wins the World Series, and while a few fans have died as a result of riots, we don’t come close to 800 deaths.

READ MORE AT FOULBALLZ.com

Ed Comber (VP Of The BBBA/Owner – foulballz.com)  Follow @foulballz

Seeing the Seawolves: About Jerry Uht Park and Meeting Eric Brookhouser

We started our family vacation in early July by going to the Erie Seawolves game on July 2. The game, against the Akron Rubberducks, was a night game with fireworks.

I was excited to see the Seawolves. As a devout and lifelong Detroit Tigers fan, my goal in life is to see every team in the Tigers system at least once, and at their home park. Erie was on our way to Toronto for the July 7 game with the Tigers, so we popped in to Jerry Uht Park.

I’d mentioned on Twitter that I’d been attending and I discovered how absolutely phenomenal the Seawolves’ social media machine is. The person managing the team’s Twitter account “liked” and “retweeted” tweets within a few hours.

It was an amazing act that few Major League Baseball teams do. It set the tenor for what would turn out to be one of my best experiences at a Minor League or Major League baseball game.

The park is simple. It’s what one expects from a AA affiliate. No frills and every seat is a great one. But what I did notice was how prominent their signage is regarding the dangers of foul balls. Good for them!

As I usually do, I sit my family in the outfield box seats, some of the safest and closest seats to the field. Those who follow me on Twitter and read my work here are all very much aware of my feelings regarding these “hero” parents who sit with their kids in the most dangerous areas and snag a foul ball while holding their kid. I practice what I preach.
I’d bought first row seats a bit closer than usual, but still in an area we could easily manage any fouls that came our way.

Once the game started, I began coaching my 9-year-old daughter on the probable locations of foul balls. One can never be too young to understand the dangers of these souvenirs. It is especially fitting since dad runs the only site dedicated to studying and discussing them.

 

Meeting Seawolves Superfan Eric Brookhouser

 

READ MORE AT FOULBALLZ.COM

Ed Comber (VP Of The BBBA/Owner – foulballz.com)  Follow @foulballz

Foul Call: Jim Joyce Ruling Exposes Flaw in Major League Baseball Umpire Judgment Calls

I am not at all a fan of  many Major League Baseball umpires. I especially dislike Jim Joyce and would love to see him leave the game. I’m a lifelong Tigers fan and the image of him blowing a call that cost Tigers starter Armando Galarraga his perfect game is still very fresh in my memory. So when he makes a foul call, I tend to jump all over him.

September 2016 gave me another reason to dislike Joyce. I fell for a “foul ball” call by Joyce. Joyce, behind the dish during a Houston Astros – Cleveland Indians game was brutally maligned on Twitter for a wild pitch call during a Lonnie Chisenhall at-bat. People, including well-respected reporters all jumped on the “Bash Joyce” bandwagon. I am embarrassed to admit my own distaste for the man colored my response too…until I went to the official Major League Baseball rule book. Then I changed my mind. Kind of.

It was on September 7, 2016.

This is the play that awaken the disdain:

 

Houston Astros hurler David Paulino threw a pitch into the dirt. The ball hit about a foot in front of the plate and bounced up. Chisenhall, the Indians’ batter, checked his swing and the ball caromed off to the left of the catcher.

 

READ THE REST AT FoulBallz.com.

MLB Foul Ball Week in Review (September 5 – September 11): Jim Joyce Wild Pitch Foul Ball,

The MLB foul ball week in review shows that Major League Baseball ended the week of September 5 – September 11, 2016 with about 156 Foul Ball Facials (#FoulBallFacials) in 155 days of games. These are only those fans hit in the head area at Major League Baseball games as self-reported on Twitter. That equates to one fan per day of play. It seems like a lot, and it is, but it could be fewer since nearly 50% of these tweets indicate the fan wasn’t paying attention. To put that into perspective, it means roughly 65 fans (conservative estimate) would have avoided foul balls to the face had they not been buried in their phones.

But that’s not the only thing going on with foul balls this week. Here’s the rundown of the best and worst foul ball and fan-related actions from the past week:

EMPLOYEE OF THE WEEK

How’s this for a day at work as a non-player? I wonder if they got the Atlanta Braves foul ball certificate. Maybe that doesn’t apply to employees who snag foul balls.

THE JIM JOYCE WILD PITCH

I am not at all a fan of Major League Baseball umpires. I especially dislike Jim Joyce and would love to see him leave the game (I’m a lifelong Tigers fan and the image of him blowing a call that cost Tigers starter Armando Galarraga his perfect game is still very fresh in my memory). Last week, I fell for a “foul ball” call by Joyce. Joyce, behind the dish during the Astros – Cleveland Indians game was brutally maligned on Twitter for a wild pitch call on a Chisenhall at-bat. People, including well-respected reporters all jumped on the “Bash Joyce” bandwagon. I am embarrassed to admit my own distaste for the man colored my response too…until I went to the official Major League Baseball rule book. Then I changed my mind. This is the play that awaken the disdain:

As you can see in the replay, the ball hit the dirt nearly a foot before the plate. How any baseball fan doesn’t see that as a wild pitch is bewildering. Actually, it’s a great deal more complicated than that though. Read on.

 

READ THE REST AT FOULBALLZ.COM.

Ed Comber (VP Of The BBBA/Owner – foulballz.com)  Follow @foulballz

MLB Foul Ball Week in Review (August 15-21): Pence Victim of Baseball Gods, Racist Tweet and Using the Force

Major League Baseball ended the week of August 15-21, 2016 with over nearly 140 Foul Ball Facials (#FoulBallFacials) in nearly 135 games. These are only those fans hit in the head area at MLB games as self-reported on Twitter. That equates to one fan per day of play. It seems like a lot, and it is, but over 60% indicate they weren’t paying attention.

But that’s not the only thing going on with foul balls this week. Here’s the rundown of the best and worst foul ball and fan-related actions from the past week:

DID THEY SEE IT?

This. I don’t know how to describe it. Is it The Force being used? Is it something else? An angel in the bullpen? This ball shot past the third base umpire, who moved out of the way quickly, and toward the Cubs bullpen. Every reliever was oblivious to it. The ball appears to careen off something, but again, none of the pitchers seem to even see it. You decide what happened:

Cubs bullpen is oblivious?

UMPIRES

READ THE REST ON FOULBALLZ.com

Ed Comber (VP Of The BBBA/Owner – foulballz.com)  Follow @foulballz