quote:
So there were 73,760,020 fans that attended baseball games in 2015, with 1750 being injured.
Odds of being injured by a foul ball are .0023%.
Odds of being struck by lightning are .03%.
I think the problem is
1. today's society is too busy on their phones
2. Ticket prices have priced real fans out of games (at least seats that are in danger of foul balls), in turn people who haven't a clue what a foul ball is, don't pay attention to the game half the time.
That being said I wouldn't be opposed to lining the nets up to the bases.
Those odds look nice, except we still don't go stand on a mountain top holding up a metal poll in a thunderstorm, right? (Also, that's lifetime stat for lightning, right?)
That's the extreme example, but it the clear illustration that odds aren't the same for everyone, everywhere and we take precautions
(EDIT- and now that I read the thread I see this faulty comparison has been addressed already by some)
I'd guess a pretty significant portion of the injuries occur down close to the field along the foul lines beyond the dugout where they're planning to put the nets up. If you sit there, your odds are higher of getting injured. Perhaps magnitudes higher.
I don't know if the real odds still justify the nets or not, but I'm also not sure how much the nets will hurt views---they can make nets pretty "transparent" these days and I know my friends are happy to tweet, snapchat, facebook them sitting in the nice seats behind home plate watching the game through a net, so hopefully any nets that go up aren't a big deal as far as views.
They went through this a few years ago in the NHL after an incident with a rogue puck. I can't say the higher glass and additional netting has hurt my experience at any hockey games.