I was at Wrigley Field this weekend for Saturday's Cubs-Giants game, and one of the many things I noticed was how close the first few rows of the seats are to the field. I later learned that at Thursday's Cubs game at Wrigley, a seven-year-old fan named Dominic DiAngi, who was attending his first Major League Baseball game, was struck in the head by a foul ball while in his field level seat. The collision resulted in a fractured skull and swelling around the brain and he remains in the hospital in serious condition, although, thankfully, he is expected to survive. Hearing about this event made me take a step back and think about the safety of fans at baseball games.

Baseball is a sport where the most popular and expensive seats are at field level, a mere few dozen feet away from the batter. The problem with this, however, is that the pitch is coming to the batter at 80 or 90-plus miles per hour, the ball travels even faster than that off of the bat, and the batter has no idea where the ball is going. This set of facts results in a potentially dangerous situation, which unfortunately is what occurred with Dominic.

You would think there would be strict safety measures in place to protect the fans from a batted ball, but after seeing it first-hand on Saturday, it isn't nearly as safe as it should be. At all professional and college stadiums, there is a large net directly behind the plate. However, the problem remains that the field level fans on both the first base and third base sides are left completely exposed.

In light of the obvious dangers to fans sitting at field level, I think the time is now to provide more protection that expands from the end of the current behind-the-plate netting around to the end of the dugouts on both sides. This new netting doesn't need to be as tall as the current net; perhaps eight or 10 feet high would be sufficient. Something like this needs to be done to protect the low level fans from hard line drives. A fraction of a second is probably not enough time to even see the ball, much less be able to react to it.

I can hear the cries from baseball purists now...this will restrict the view and is not best for the tradition of the game. Well let me tell you, one injury at a baseball game, especially to an innocent kid, is too many. People will get used to it, just as they did when the NHL put the large netting behind the goals after 13-year-old Britannie Cecil got struck in the head by a puck and died at a Columbus Blue Jackets game in 2002. As was the case when the NHL made this smart (but late) move, this is something that needs to be done in baseball at all levels, professional and college.

Let us use Dominic DiAngi and Britannie Cecil as examples for why the baseball authorities need to immediately do something about this problem. The last thing we need is for another injury or death to another innocent kid.