Fan Interference
Do you need a break from thinking and/or freaking out about the election? If so, you've come to the right place, at least today. Rather than writing about real or imagined election interference, I've chosen to devote my essay today to fan interference--as illustrated chiefly by two plays in the recently concluded World Series between the Dodgers and the Yankees.
In Game 1, a Dodgers fan seated behind the wall in left-center field reached just over the wall to catch a ball hit by Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres. The umpire immediately signaled fan interference based on a judgment that if the fan had not interfered, the ball would have hit the wall and stayed in play. Torres was awarded a double. Here's the play.
For Yankees fans, that play brought to mind Game 1 of the 1996 American League Championship Series, when 12-year-old fan Jeffrey Maier very clearly reached over the stands to catch a ball hit by Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, preventing it from being caught by Baltimore Orioles right fielder Tony Tarasco. On that occasion, the umpire erroneously failed to call fan interference, and because Major League Baseball did not adopt replay review until 2008, the call stood as a home run.
Fan interference was called again in Game 4 of this year's World Series, once again on a ball hit by Torres. Dodgers right fielder Mookie Betts reached into foul territory to catch the ball, whereupon one very aggressive Yankees fan ripped the ball out of Betts's glove, while another fan grabbed Betts's other arm to prevent him from fighting back. The umpire called the play an out based on fan interference and the two fans were ejected from the game. Here's the play.
Although I am a Yankees fan, I acknowledge that both the Game 1 call and the Game 4 call correctly applied the fan interference rule. However, one might ask whether the rules are sensible. Why are players permitted to reach into the stands to make a catch (as Betts did in Game 4) but fans are not allowed to reach onto the airspace above the field to snag a souvenir? Would it not be more consistent to have rules that either permitted neither or both?
The case for neither--i.e., for disallowing fans to invade the players' domain and disallowing players to invade the fans' domain--is stronger than allowing both. The Game 4 fan aggressiveness is highly unusual but there are reasons to worry about collisions between players and fielders even when fans behave.
According to the official Major League Baseball rule, "spectator interference" will be called when a fan reaches into the playing area (as the fan did in this year's Game 1) to prevent a fielder from making a play. "But no interference is called if a spectator comes in contact with a batted or thrown ball without reaching onto the field of play -- even if a fielder might have caught the ball had the spectator not been there." That exception doesn't apply to the Game 4 shenanigans because the Yankees fans didn't merely come into contact with Betts. They assaulted him after he had clearly caught the ball.
However, consider a garden variety circumstance in which a defensive player reaches into the stands to try to catch a foul ball while one or more spectators also try to catch it. Major League Baseball treats this a bit like the way that the NFL rules treat pass interference: as long as both actors (fielder and fan in baseball, receiver and defensive back in football) are going for the ball, it's up for grabs. This baseball rule seems at least a bit odd and potentially dangerous for players and fans alike.
To be sure, the risk of a collision between a fielder and a fan is probably lower than other risks spectators face--including from tussling with one another over foul balls or being hit by one. MLB has sought to mitigate the latter risk in recent years by extending netting to places where balls are likely to land with the greatest speed, but the risk remains.
For a more dramatic illustration of the sort of risk posed by baseball's allowance of competition in the stands between players and fans, consider the NBA, where courtside seats are highly sought after and very expensive, despite the risk that an occupant of such a seat could end up having someone the size of Nikola Jokić or Joel Embiid crash into them. Under the NBA rules, a player can launch himself from the playing floor into the stands to prevent a ball from landing out of bounds, so long as he swats the ball back onto the court before alighting on the floor or in the lap of an unfortunate fan. So far as I've been able to ascertain, there have not been major injuries arising out of such collisions, but that's just good luck. NBA players have gotten hurt by crash landing on photographers and videographers positioned very close to the court under the basket. Here's an example of LeBron James and a cameraman both getting bruised that way.
Are occasional collisions just the price we pay for watching or participating in live sports? No, of course not. This is the price we pay for MLB and the NBA positioning fans and others too close to the field of play and the court, respectively. By contrast, in football and soccer there are no collisions between players and fans (at least when the latter don't run onto the field or pitch in clear violation of the rules) because they are set back a sufficient distance so that players can go out of bounds and then some without their momentum carrying them into the audience.
Would NBA fans pay as much as they now do for courtside seats if instead of sitting literally next to the court they were seated at a distance equivalent to what now counts as about three or four rows back? Maybe not quite as much, but I suspect that the revenue loss would be slight. Fans willing to pay for courtside seats are paying in part for the best seats in the house. In an arena with no rows 1-3, row 4 (relabeled row 1) has the best seats in the house.
This phenomenon would be true in baseball as well. I play in a recreational softball league each summer. In addition to a foul line running from home plate to right and left fields, there is, on each side of the field, a second line designating where the ball is out of play. It is permissible to reach over into the out-of-play area. It is even permissible to catch a foul ball in the in-play territory and then be carried by one's momentum out of play. If that happens, however, the runners advance. (The MLB equivalent of that happened in Game 1 of the World Series, when Yankees left fielder Alex Verdugo caught a foul ball hit by Dodger Shohei Ohtani by reaching into and then falling into the stands.) If MLB were really interested in protecting players and fans, it could move the stands back a bit from an out-of-play line.
What about the notion that moving the fans back would create a greater distance between them and the players? Cry me a river. The vast majority of fans sit substantially farther back already and yet find that the seats are worth paying for.
Bottom line: The way to stop fan interference is to stop seating fans where they can interfere.