Clemson head baseball coach Erik Bakich promised the school will extend safety netting at Doug Kingsmore Stadium after a fan was hit in the head by a foul ll ball Tuesday and had to be carted off by medical personnel.
According to UpstateToday.com, the injury happened in the bottom of the seventh inning during the Tigers' 8-5 victory over Charlotte. The fan, identified by Bakich as Virginia Barnes, was sitting above the visitors' dugout along the third-base line when she was struck by a line-drive foul ball.
Play had to be stopped after Barnes was struck and medical personnel attended to her injuries. Barnes suffered a large cut on her forehead and another woman appeared to be hit in the chest by the ball.
Bakich opened his postgame news conference Tuesday by saying that three fans have been hit by foul balls in the past week, and extended netting will be in place ahead of the Tigers' series opener against Pittsburg Friday night.
“That’s the third person that’s been hit with a foul ball where that netting doesn’t go far enough,” Bakich said. “I just want to let Tiger Nation know that come hell or high water, there will be extended netting by this Friday for Pitt. To Virginia, who was hit in the head, and to the little girl that was hit in the face the other day, we’ll make sure that this is a fun and awesome place to come watch a game, so we will extend those nets.”
Barnes was conscious when she was carted out of the stadium in the bottom of the eighth inning.
Bakich said the netting should be extended beyond both dugouts to the coaches' boxes at third and first bases.
“That’s been a thing in Major League Baseball where they extended the netting all the way down in a lot of stadiums, all the way down to the Little League World Series, which has netting all the way down,” he said. “For us, as we continue to grow our program, there’s a whole other standard deviation of fan support we can get here if this is a fun, awesome, safe place. It’s safe, and this is a fluky thing that happened, but when it happens, it gets your attention quick.
“You’ve got kids beyond there all playing on the grass hill, and you’ve got people who just don’t have time to react. Of course, there are signs in every stadium that say ‘beware of foul balls,’ but we also still need to do our part, and that’s netting.
“You don’t want to have an environment where people are getting hurt. We’ve had three people get hurt now in the last week. It’s time to fix it, and we’ll do it tomorrow and Thursday before Friday.”
