This used to be a fairly common sight in baseball games. Before warning tracks became common, before anyone thought of padding, walls were unforgiving, cold, hard concrete. The wreck of Pete Reiser’s career due to a dangerous inability to stay away from the wall has become legendary, but it wasn’t just Pistol Pete, it was Earle Combs suffering a fractured skull and a broken collarbone on the same play, it was Ted Williams shattering his elbow making a catch at the wall in the 1950 All-Star game (Williams said he was never able to swing as well again), and it was dozens of fractures and concussions, major and minor. Sometimes the wall didn’t have to be concrete. In the 1960s, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore had a chickenwire fence. In 1963, Mickey Mantle virtually destroyed his left leg–he broke his left foot, plus tore up the knee–when he jumped into the fence trying to catch a home run drive off the bat of Brooks Robinson. Two days later, columnist Arthur Daley of the New York Times published an idiotic column titled “The Brittle Bruiser.” Mantle was brittle and he did not take care of himself, but when the guy had just had his leg mangled by someone’s cheapass idea of fencing is not the time to accuse the guy of not being able to stand up to the rigors of the long season.
Over time, fences became more standardized. Warning tracks were a feature in every ballpark, and padding became commonplace. It is now unheard of for players to be carried off the field unconscious–but as with so many “retro” features of new ballparks, unpadded walls and the injuries associated with them are now making a comeback due to the presence of plexiglass scoreboards, windows into the stands, such as in Petco’s right-center “Beach” area, and other hardened features in the outfield. For example, in 2007 Matt Kemp separated his shoulder when he fell into such a scoreboard in right field at Dodger Stadium. The occasion for this dispatch is that tonight Yankees center fielder Brett Gardner had to be carted off the field after he fell backwards into a plexiglass window in the outfield wall, a viewport for denizens of the bullpen, at the new Yankee Stadium. It is readily apparent that for an outfielder moving at speed, a hardened window isn’t too different from a hardened wall.
This would seem obvious, so obvious that the decision to place these obstacles in the field of play can only be described as blatant disregard for the safety of the players. Gardner seems to have escaped with little more than a headache, but if such careless design decisions are not rectified in all major league parks, we will someday see someone carried off the field unconscious, or worse. Reiser once hit the wall so hard that he was given last rites. We don’t need to have that play reenacted in modern dress just because someone decided that the bullpen seats couldn’t be elevated or the outfield wall was a good place to sell some animated ad space. Forgoing that revenue would be a small price to pay to avoid that scene.
Ballparks with the so-called retro features have been popular since Camden Yards was built in 1992. As you say, it is now unheard of for players to be carried off the field unconscious... that's 17 years of other ball parks with retro features... Coors, Comerica, Minute Maid, etc.
If you want to blame the shoddy design features of a $1.5 billion dollar stadium like the Yankees stadium, by all means do... but don't blame retro features in general.
Nope I haven't. But I wasn't the one saying it was shoddy because I really don't know anything about it besides what I have read and seen here and there.
I was suggesting that Steven thought it was shoddy and that it was more accurate to blame the design of Yankee stadium than retro features in general.
Yankee Stadium is ok. Citi Field is much, much better. The problem in this case seems to be the poor design of the outfield fence. There is padding on the lower half and plexiglass inset into it on the top half.
It looks like when he hit the padding, it stopped the momentum of his lower body and his body pivoted where the wall material changed and his head went directly into the plexiglass. If the whole wall was level there probably would have been no problem.
I have been to the new Yankee stadium - it felt kind of like the Cell in Chicago - but the food wasn't as good. I'm not saying that's bad - it just wasn't knock-out great and the food I thought was pretty disappointing. Nathan's? Whatever, I get it, I'm in New York. And it just felt like the architects knew they had 84 pieces (# picked at random) they had to include but they only had 81 places - things felt kind of packed in and the solutions to these problems were unimaginative.
"Forgoing that revenue would be a small price to pay to avoid that scene". HAHAHAHA. MLB owners forgoing revenue! To protect players!!! You're a funny guy, Goldman.
"Mr. Goldman? Bud Selig. Have a beef with your latest blog post thing there. You're putting words together in a way that's just...well, it's unnatural, Steve. 'Forgoing' so close to 'revenue'? That's just reckless, Steve, reckless."
"but if such careless design decisions are not rectified in all major league parks"
Not sure what might be meant by "rectified in all" here, because as a fan-base would anyone want to see the outfield wall at Wrigley changed? Or the leftfield scoreboard at Fenway? Just wondering about Steve's, and others, thoughts on that? I know that as a Sox fan, and despite wanting the players to have as safe an environment as possible, I would find hard to stomach a dramatic change to that scoreboard.
If they were lazy, out of shape, or bloated from the "multivitamins" they take, less people would be running into walls. To solve this problem, I suggest clubhouses swap their Gatorade for Dr. Pepper. Or beer. This will also aid their transition to post-retirement since they can easily sign with any number of popular rec softball leagues.
Also, fine baserunners for having the audacity to steal bases. This kind of punishment would set a good precedent for our children who see these so-called role models get rewarded for stolen bases with more playing time at the tops of major league line ups and bigger contracts. Kind of like regulations against candy-flavored cigarettes, baseball should discourage the sugar-coating of illegal practices. Positive reinforcement of such nefarious activity like an official declaring a runner "safe" when they were clearly guilty of stealing the base should be frowned upon. Stealing is wrong and it must be stopped.
That was a bit of a digression. The main problem is athletes risk injury running into walls, so the solution is to discourage running. Any chance an athlete takes at moving their body might result in injury, as the recent waves of Guitar Hero playing and sneezing shows. Prevent pitchers from dancing on the mound before a pitch by banning the windup. Replace athletic trainers with drinking buddies and swap the clubhouse hot tub for a wet bar. Maybe after these kinds of changes, these formerly svelte, buff athletes will discover they have more in common with the average fan.
I nearly peed myself laughing at this. Thanks Richard for the silliness. I am surprised there hasn't been a Senate Subcommittee hearing over the reckless nabbing of additional bases. How dare Rickey Henderson and Lou Brock be heralded for their nefarious deeds!!
Well, some people just autonegative anything I say, some others probably thought I was actually serious, and others probably got the joke and didn't like it anyway (which is fine by me). I've written better comedy tidbits about baseball, but usually they're article-length and this was an incomplete blurb and not all that great.
I wonder if some of the people who click the minus on your well thought out joke have really pathetic lives who feel a small sense of power by giving you the thumbs down. It saddens me.
Eh, people keep accusing me of being unemployed and having no life. I own my own house (though it doesn't have a basement to blog from), work full time and am going to school for a PhD, yet I still make time to "chat" here on topics worth my time. I think that's a better usage of time than negatively clicking particular users over and over again.
That's actually something I found kind of interesting regarding BP Idol is we have quite a few PhD candidates who are employed full-time, some of whom I assume have families, are writing weekly articles and responding to comments regularly. Not only do they have a lot invested in this, but they're constantly amped up with all the deadlines and feedback. I know when the Initial Entries came out many people, myself included, felt they could write something that was of "finalist" quality... but spitting them out on a weekly basis? And improving from one week to another? Kudos.
Nothing personal to any other commenters, but we might give others the benefit of the doubt by adopting my modest proposal to assume that people got the "silliness" of it, but thought it was pretty lame (which it really was). I am sure other efforts will go swimmingly and amuse the stathead community to no end.
although Richard's post has an 8.2 Value Over Replacement Joke, the average reader does not comprehend this because it doesn't do sacrifice bunts well.
(the Replacement Joke, btw, is the one that ends with the dog saying "DiMaggio?")
Nope. In fact I've never even heard someone tell the joke without giving the dog some kind of bad Noo Yohk accent, as though to explain the 'Dimaggio' bit.
It's not even just retro parks - there's just not as much concern for safety as you'd reasonably expect.
When Rogers Centre added those fancy scoreboards to their outfield wall, they didn't even bother to ensure that the edges were smooth, and at the 2005 home opener Johnny Damon crashed into the wall and suffered a large cut on his arm.
The wall Rick Ankiel hit this year in St Louis was padded, no? Imagine if it hadn't been... We may have seen another Pete Reiser / Last Rites situation.
Thinking out loud, if the top of the wall flexes, then I can see fielders actually pushing / smashing the wall to force the top edge of the wall out in order to keep the ball in play.
On the surface, I like he concept. I'm not sure why owners don't push to keep their player investments safe.
moving the wall back a foot may just be the extra difference. A diagonal leap is more efficient than a vertical one and if the wall gave way to allow that, it may let Mr. Hunter make a catch he otherwise wouldn't with an unyielding wall.
Maybe they should replace the wall with a ramp... it'll lead to either more game-saving catches or some 3D effects for bleacher bums, but it'd be popular.
Great rant and fans in parks like Yankee Stadium with that cheesy scoreboard also posing a hazard should clamor for owners to fix up and pad unpadded areas and, if they want plexiglass, at least have it designed to fall in with some kind of hydraulic catch system rather than just be a see-through wall
and so we should place some space-age absorbant material covering the ivy of Wrigley Field ... maybe Soriano might not be afraid to come within 10 feet of the wall then ... why not just move the fence back to Polo Ground distances if you want to insure 100% safety ... get real
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In 20 years we're going to find the retro-stadium fad really puzzling, yet also a telling analog for the death of ideas during the Pax Seliga.