POOR EXCUSE

I will tell you the real reason:

Crain's reports:

The Chicago Cubs want to shut down car traffic on Addison and Clark streets adjacent to Wrigley Field during games, team officials announced today.

In a move to extend the security perimeter around the stadium, the Cubs say they are in advanced talks with the city about limiting traffic on both streets to city vehicles and buses during all events at the park.

The push, the team said, comes from a Major League Baseball security recommendation for ballparks to maintain at least a 100-foot perimeter of control in every direction.

>>>> Security is a poor, red herring excuse. The real reason the team wants to control the intersection like a border crossing  is that Ricketts is building an alcoholic plaza at Clark and Addison in which he wants to trap and control pre- and post-game sales to fans. This is not a safety issue at all - - - in fact, it creates one.

Addison and Clark are MAJOR through streets. Police and fire departments need access through this intersection. And what about the buses bringing people to/from the game? Talk about a major disruption. Then adding a hotel across the street, where will the taxi's go? Double park on the side streets?

It is not cynical to think that every move made in the last four years ownership has been an attempt to corral each and every dime from the public for any tangential Cubs experience, including bullying competing bars and venues for their patrons. Just because you own the entire block does not mean you have a right to close the streets for your own private parties. 

UPDATE: 1-19-16

From the Chicago Tribune:

The Cubs' idea of closing Clark and Addison streets to automobiles on game days is a non-starter, according to Mayors office.

Cubs business President Crane Kenney floated the idea at the Cubs Convention last weekend of shutting down the main thoroughfares to allow the team to create a 100-foot security perimeter around  Wrigley Field.

But mayoral spokeswoman Kelley Quinn shot down the idea, which would exponentially worsen already brutal traffic in congested Wrigleyville when the Cubs play.

"Of course we are not going to close Clark and Addison," Quinn said in an email. "Safety and security are everyone's top concern, and we will work with the community, Ald. (Tom) Tunney and the Cubs to achieve that without having to shut down two major roads in a neighborhood."

Cubs spokesman Julian Green said the team is trying to comply with new Major League Baseball security requirements, including a zone around each ballpark within which vehicles get screened. "This wasn't just a trial balloon," Green said of Kenney's talk of closing the streets. "This was a way to try to meet the security mandates."

Green said the team plans to work with the league and the city to meet the standards, hopefully by Opening Day. But he would not say whether there's a plan to do so without closing the streets. "We're going to keep talking and working with the parties, but at this point there aren't any specifics," he said. "If there are other ways to meet the mandates, we will listen." 

>>>> Again, when does MLB control the streets of a major metropolitan city? And when can MLB "mandate" anything on how a team runs its ball park? This is merely a cynical expansion of closing all the streets around Wrigley to have an enclosed theme park atmosphere controlled by the Cubs.
 

SAFETY

There have been an epidemic of serious fan injuries this season at baseball parks.

Sunday's Cubs game was halted due to a fan injury.

The game was briefly delayed in the first inning after Kyle Schwarber's foul liner struck a female fan sitting just past the camera well on the first base side.

The woman was carried off on a stretcher and taken to a hospital. The Cubs said she was conscious, but had no further details on her condition.

''Oh my God, awful,'' Joe Maddon said.

Several fans around the majors have been hit this season by fouls and flying bats, and Major League Baseball has said it is studying the issue of crowd safety.

Maddon issued his own warning.

''Pay attention. I hate to say, but those are wonderful seats. Probably pay a lot of money for them, you're digging the fact that you're right there. I watch and and I see people turning their back to the field when action is going. You just can't do it, you can't do it,'' he said.

''But what I'm saying is, when you're at the ballpark and you're in those particular locations, watch what is going on. Don't turn your head away from the action. Every time a ball is pitched you look, you look and see, then you can go and talk. That's probably the best answer, to just pay attention.''

The problem with Maddon's advice is that it was fine twenty years ago but not today.

Tiger pitcher Justin Verlander went to social media to push for changes after a woman was hit by a foul ball in the eighth inning of a recent Tigers' home game against the Texas Rangers.

"More protective measures need to be put in place in all ball parks! Players are sick of seeing injuries that could easily be avoided!" Verlander said on the social media site after seeing medical personnel take the woman away in a neck brace, adding that Major League Baseball should make changes "before it's too late."

The Tigers said after the game that the woman, who was sitting behind the home team dugout, was hospitalized for tests but was alert and conscious.

Tigers third baseman Nick Castellanos said there was "no way" the fan could have reacted in time to avoid being hit by the ball of Anthony Goes’s bat.

He's in favor of increased security netting between the field and fans.

In July a class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court in San Francisco seeking to have Major League Baseball install such protective netting down the baselines. Currently such netting is typically used only directly behind home plate.

In the past, the license printed on the back of your ticket insulated owners from liability. The legal concept is assumption of risk. It presumes to have certain knowledge about the likelihood that objects can fly off the field into the stands, so the law imposes a duty on fans to take reasonable precautions for their own safety. The legal effect is if a fan  is even 1% at fault for their own injuries, they are not entitled to any legal recovery whatsoever as a matter of law.

But there have been a few court cases that have versed this old doctrine and imposed some liability on teams. Truth be told, owners do not want to aggrieve high paying season-ticket holders who like the unobstructed view from their close seats near the field in foul territory, and they believe these premium fans do not want something as foreign as safety netting getting in the way. But baseball owners are adding the danger of fan injury caused by the wave of new ballpark improvements.

Technology has become today's addictive distraction. People bend over their cell phones like nuns in a church pew. The world around them is lost; these people don't pay attention to where they are going (running into people on sidewalk, stepping out into traffic; texting while driving). 

And baseball owners, in order to attract younger fans, push team apps, stats, fantasy sports to patron's smart phones. They want fans to tweet and retweet during the game. They are fans to have "an interactive experience." 

The addition of large electronic scoreboards showing replays and information further distract fans attention from the actual game on the field. 

Twenty years ago people came to baseball games to watch a contest but also to have a social experience with family and friends. Sitting a park, with the ebb and flow of down time between pitches, allowed fans to actually talk to each other during a game. Perhaps, with the advances in communications technology, the average person is less engaged on one-on-one personal conversations than in the past. And that is the point that baseball does not fully comprehend.

A split second reaction time looking at a foul ball racing toward your head can be the difference between life and death. (The last baseball fan fatality by a baseball in the stands was in 1970 at Dodger Stadium). The human brain is hard wired to make instant reactions to protect itself from harm. Reaction times have been decreased for fans in the stands as in the case of Wrigley Field, the foul territory from the field to the seats has dramatically contracted over the years. Closer seats without protective netting equals fan injury. A distracted fan by his own phone or the video boards is a sitting duck in the stands.

But owners will say that tradition and the fan experience outweighs the rare fan injury. In the NHL, a young woman was killed by a stray puck which lead to the league putting in protective netting around the entire rink. It is possible to put a clear, transparent netting around the box seats to catch screaming liners or helicoptering baseball bats. But in the cost-benefit analysis, teams won't do it. 

Economic models show that the value of a human life is $3.5 million. Is it worth that much money to install safety netting in each park to avoid serious to fatal fan injury? Or do baseball men think the money is better spent on a veteran utility infielder as the 25th man on their roster?

FAN SAFETY

For whatever reason, there have been more horrible fan injuries this year at MLB games.

Last night, a young woman in Boston was impaled in her forehead by a broken bat. She sustained life threatening injuries according to the Boston Globe report:

A woman sitting down the third baseline at Fenway Park Friday night had to be carted out of the stadium after she was hit by a broken bat, and her injuries appeared to be “life-threatening” that night, Boston police spokeswoman Rachel McGuire told Boston.com.

In the second inning, Oakland Athletics third baseman Brett Lawrie shattered his bat on a pitch from Red Sox hurler Wade Miley; a piece of the bat flew into the stands, striking the woman in the head.

Boston Globe reporter reported that there was “lots of blood” and called it an “awful scene.”

The woman, who was sitting near the field with an unidentified man and her son, was transported to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, McGuire said. The game was delayed while she was treated and removed from the stadium.

Other reports indicated that fans offered paramedics their  t-shirts to help stop the bleeding as it was described as being more blood than anyone had ever seen. Fans in the section were in shock and silence when the grounds crew had to come to the area to clean up the blood. The umpires and players on the field who saw the incident huddled on the field during the delay, obviously shaken up by the event.

Fan safety was an issue when Wrigley Field opened up without any real sanitation. A woman was hit in the back of her head by a foul ball behind the plate as it stretched the netting causing the impact. More and more parks have little to no foul ground so as the owners can add more premium seats. But this adds an additional level of risk for screaming foul balls at 100 plus miles per hour hitting a patron, or as last night, a sharp projectile flying into the stands.

There is some precedent for ball park owner liability in these matters.

It may have come down to what hockey had to do - - - install nets all around the lower level of the arena. With current manufacturing technologies, one can assume that netting can be made clear and transparent as to not hinder the view of the fans in the box seats.