I stand by my original recommendation: make bubble wrap available for all fans as they arrive at the ballpark. Or maybe for when they leave the house? Can we get stats on accidents en route to the park? I mean, we went to Yankee Stadium a couple weeks ago and saw someone fall off a bicycle trying to avoid an oncoming car in the parking lot.
I find it hard to wrap my head around this sort of slippery slope argument. The idea that accidents can happen anywhere/anytime shouldn't mean we refuse to take basic steps towards improving public safety. That's a brutal, cold way to look at this whole society thing we have going here.
By this rationale, I guess we also shouldn't be fixing potholes or re-painting crosswalks. A ballpark isn't any different because you choose to buy a ticket, go to the game, and sit close to the field.
It's true that we assume risk all the time, but the notion that this is somehow different because it's baseball and it's a spectator sport and you've probably paid a good amount of money to experience is just so thuddingly cold-hearted to me.
What I'm hearing is essentially: "This is the way I enjoy baseball games the most, and this is the way it's always been. I will lose a tiny bit of my appreciation for seeing a baseball game live if there's extended netting, and that tiny bit of my appreciation is worth more than the added safety of others."
I mean, you can dress that up with arguments about taking risks and having personal responsibility all you want—and you might actually draw people into a discussion about slippery slopes and all of that. But when we've exhausted all of the broad philosophical angles ("hell, you could break your neck on your way to the ballpark!") you're still basically saying this: "The way I enjoy my baseball game is more important than reducing the risk of life-threatening injury to thousands of people per year."
And all this for a net. It's just a net.
In fact, it's the best type of net for people's eyes and brains to ignore, and I'm sure we'll only get better at making nets like this in the future.
I dunno. This is pretty cut and dry to me.