For those fans who have been impacted by a foul ball injury, baseball is as far from apple pie as it comes. The reality is that serious injuries happen every year and nobody in power has addressed this threat to fan safety. Just as Big Tobacco concealed the risks of smoking, so has baseball for all of these years concealed knowledge of foul ball risks to fans.

Foul Ball Safety Now seeks to hold MLB accountable for the legacy of unnecessary fan injuries and deaths, and to compel action at the highest levels (courts and Congress) to end the Baseball Rule and require adequate netting to ensure that all ballparks are certified as foul-ball safe.

Please watch EXHIBIT A, the well-produced 5-minute ESPN video from 2019 that is a powerful smoking gun enlightening all who watch it about just how bad the situation is with the current netting status in ballparks across America. 

There is an urgent need to investigate the lack of adequate netting throughout professional baseball in cities across the country. No rules or regulations are applied or enforced at any of these professional teams’ ballparks to ensure fan safety. Furthermore, an antiquated liability protection known as the ‘Baseball Rule’ shields team owners and leagues from consequences when fans are injured, often leaving the victims with crippling medical costs that would otherwise be subject to legal recourse.

We know of at least two children who were critically injured in the summer of 2023 in professional baseball. A little girl was critically injured at the Peoria Chiefs’ Dozer Park on July 28, 2023, hit by a foul ball down the right field line that sent her to the hospital where she was placed in the critical care unit. A 3-week-old baby girl was seriously injured in Hickory, NC when a foul ball hit her in the head in August 2023.

According to our own research, at least 45 children were seriously injured by foul balls between 2008-2019 in MLB and the minor leagues. Most of them were hit in the head, some had fractured skulls, permanent brain injuries and other developmental impacts. Most of these children were injured at MLB games. But consider the fact that the minor leagues play three times as many games in a season as MLB does, and you can quickly understand how there are far more opportunities for young children and fans of all ages to be injured by foul balls in the minor league ballparks.

Major League Baseball has acknowledged this problem exists throughout the minor leagues, and issued a requirement on December 7, 2022 that all minor league ballparks should extend netting. However, the league gave all the teams until opening day 2025, allowing two full seasons of baseball to proceed with dangerously inadequate protections in place to safeguard fans. 

Foul Ball Safety Now identified 70 professional baseball facilities across the country that still had no netting past the ends of the dugouts during the 2024 season. We remain skeptical that all 70 ballparks will make these improvements in the offseason this winter, and regardless of any progress, based on everything we’ve learned thus far, the risk of serious injury or death will likely persist into the future without the combination of regulatory oversight and law enforcement accountability to ensure that effective action is taken to stop fan injuries.

MLB has not delivered on previous fan safety promises made by Commissioner Rob Manfred, who has acknowledged that fan injuries are a problem, but has failed to issue a mandate to standardize fan safety protections across MLB stadiums, leaving each team to decide their own approach. This has led to a patchwork of inconsistent and inadequate efforts, and fans are still being injured despite piecemeal improvements. Apart from obvious shortcomings in protection down the lines at many MLB stadiums, it’s unclear how many MLB stadiums have raised the netting vertically to protect fans seated in areas like the loge behind home plate, where Linda Goldbloom was hit at Dodger Stadium, causing her death. 

Fan injuries continue to happen at MLB stadiums that have extended netting to varying degrees in recent years, demonstrating that such voluntary efforts are not working to stem the problem. This spring, a Toronto Blue Jays fan was struck in the head by a foul ball and suffered a concussion. A pregnant woman was struck in the belly on April 14, 2024, and an 8-year-old boy was struck in the eye by a foul ball on May 17, 2024. Both incidents occurred at Dodger Stadium – the same ballpark where the two known fan fatalities from foul balls occurred (Alan Fish in 1970 and Linda Goldbloom in 2018) — and where netting has been extended and raised, again demonstrating that piecemeal voluntary measures aren’t enough. A fan was blinded by a foul ball at a Pittsburgh Pirates game on July 1, 2023, providing another example of a stadium that has extended netting but is still not adequately protecting all fans from serious risk. 

This entirely preventable epidemic of serious foul ball injuries to fans will continue to haunt Major League Baseball as long as basic precautionary measures are not taken to mandate comprehensive extended netting. 

MLB has had at least fifty years of opportunity and justification to be proactive and transparent about fan safety risks from foul balls. Why 50 years? In 1970, fourteen-year-old Alan Fish was killed by a foul ball that struck his head as he sat along the first base line at Dodger Stadium. More protective netting should have gone up immediately. MLB could have acted responsibly to protect fans from that day forward. Yet, every fan who occupied the same seat as Alan Fish for at least 45 years after his injury remained unprotected. Fans throughout MLB and all of professional baseball who sat above or beyond the dugouts remained sitting ducks despite MLB’s clear knowledge of risk following Fish’s death.

Cover-up or scandal? What could the players’ union, broadcasters and baseball journalists have done about this crisis for a half a century?

Most people attending a baseball game don’t understand the certainty of the danger – that it’s not if but when a fan will be maimed by a foul ball.

But MLB knows. And they’re withholding their knowledge of this threat to fans. In 2019, Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth wrote to MLB asking the league to supply the data on foul ball injuries and danger zones in stadiums. To date, nothing has been made public. Why not?

NBC News compiled data from first aid contractors working for only four out of the 30 MLB teams, and reported that at least 701 fans had been injured by baseballs from 2012 to 2019. NBC’s own research found an additional 107 injuries in that time period. That’s 808 foul ball fan injuries. Factoring in the other 26 MLB teams, that would come out to roughly 5,000 fan injuries over the same period. Keep in mind, these figures are only for MLB, and do not account for any of the fan injuries in the minor leagues where there are three times more games played.

Ask yourself, what government or regulated industry would tolerate that injury rate in any other aspect of commerce? 

No government has come to the rescue, and professional baseball certainly hasn’t stepped up adequately to protect us. 

We’ve conducted over 70 interviews in the course of our own investigation, including dozens of victims and family members. Many of them no longer go to games and have turned their backs on baseball, feeling they were not treated fairly. 

We’ve also conducted compelling interviews with MLB and minor league players, and other insiders to the game. It’s been shocking to hear players and other insiders admit that they warn their own families not to sit in exposed seats, yet nobody is alerting the rest of us to the dangers.

We must take it upon ourselves to fight for our safety. Join us! 

This is an ongoing campaign that will not stop as long as fans keep getting seriously injured by foul balls in professional baseball.