No changes for Ballpark despite new recommendations

At this week’s Winter Meetings, the Major League commissioner made new fan safety recommendations, which should trickle down to minor league ballparks like Southwest University Park.

But El Paso Chihuahuas General Manager Brad Taylor told ABC-7 not to expect any major changes, since the local ballpark appears to already be in compliance with the latest recommendations.

It was a broken bat incident last summer in Boston, which left a woman with life-threatening injuries to her head, that prompted MLB Sommissioner Rob Manfred to make these fan safety recommendations: They include encouraging clubs to expand netting behind home plate in order to shield fans from line-drives and bats in field level seats. He said the netting should extend between the near ends of both dugouts.

Manfred also proposed notifying fans in certain areas there are safer seating options if desired.

“There’s no plans to change anything at this point,” Taylor said. “But I think we’re always going to consider our fans and if there is something more that needs to be considered, we’ll consider it.”

Taylor said the recommendations were mostly meant for older Major League ballparks, but since Southwest University Park is just two years old, the netting already extends from the edge one dugout to the other, which is in compliance with the Commissioners recommendations.

But those recommendations still won’t protect fans sitting behind the dugouts. And in June of last year, two Chihuahuas fans were struck by a bat right behind the home dugout.

“It hit my boyfriend on the head and then it hit the lady right behind us on her knee,” El Pasoan Claudia Jacquez told ABC-7.

“We’ve got options for people that want to be behind the net, don’t want to be behind the net,” Taylor said. “But we’ve also been at practice since we opened the ballpark to let people know you’re attending a baseball game, you need to pay attention.”

ABC-7 also asked Taylor about the possibility of metal detectors at Southwest University Park, which are now standard now at Major League parks.

He said there was no talk of that at this point. When asked if he thought that could be next, he replied: “I don’t know the answer to that. I mean, I would ask you, ‘Are we far away from that at malls, or at schools or at hospitals?'”