MLB Ballparks: Safe Environments For Kids?
By: Daddy Unscripted
Tags: MLB, Baseball, Parenting, Daddy Unscripted, Childhood

What does “Family Day” actually mean at the ballpark these days?

Life can be cyclical. I’ve been waiting for my life to come around to the place where it is now for a couple of decades now. To have the opportunity to share the joy of the sport of baseball with my kids the way I shared it with my own Dad. That time is now. That time was this past weekend. Sunday during Opening Weekend at Angels Stadium for our little family. The idea of it couldn’t have seemed more perfect. Unfortunately, the reality of how the day played out was more nightmare than it was dreamy.

I’ve been going to professional baseball games since I can remember. My Dad was a huge Dodgers and Angels fan. Not entirely coincidentally, I was born and raised in Southern California. The “Big A” (home of the California Angels or the Anaheim Angels or the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) was our local stadium, just 20 or so minutes’ drive up the freeway.

There was a time that we went to quite a few Dodgers home games at Chavez Ravine. It was a bigger trek for us from Orange County, but my Dad had been a fan of the Dodgers since their origin in Brooklyn. As a young boy, I don’t recall ever having a negative experience at Dodger Stadium. The drives were truly the biggest downfall. But, as a young passenger, that really wasn’t too trying on me.

I have a great many memories from games at either ballpark. I remember experiencing Fernando Mania firsthand more than once with the enigmatic Fernando Valenzuela on the mound for the boys in blue. I grew to love some of those old players like Ron Cey, Steve Yeager, Pedro Guerrero, Dusty Baker, and Steve Sax.

My Dad and I, together, chased Don Sutton’s 300th win when he was pitching for the Angels. On June 14, 1986, Sutton was denied his 300th win when another pitcher came in and lost the lead for the team. Just 4 days later on June 18, 1986, my Dad surprised me and we went back to the Big A. It was announced late that day that Don Sutton was going to start again, as he wanted another shot to get his 300th win at home. Sutton pitched a complete game that day to join the illustrious 300-win club.

Some 4 years and many baseball games later, my Dad died 2 weeks before my 18th birthday. Clearly, baseball was a massive link between us. It was one of the biggest of the many bonds we shared. I’m very aware and absolutely okay with the idea that my, at times, borderline unhealthy passion for the sport of baseball may be cloaked to some extent in a never-ending journey to hold what cannot be held. The “you wanna have a catch?” scene from Field of Dreams? Yeah… that’s pretty much it.

When I worked at Tower Records from age 18 to about 24, I would buy tickets for up to 20 games at Angels Stadium and go by myself to watch the sport I loved. I didn’t necessarily care who was playing. That didn’t matter. It was the games, the sounds, keeping score in the program the way my Dad had taught me so many years ago.

In my 30’s, I was part of a small group of people that shared season tickets to Angels games. I got a pair of tickets to 15 or so games every season for a handful of years. Our seats were out in right field, maybe 14 rows back from the outfield wall. Perfect seats with a fantastic view of the entire playing field.

It was somewhere during this time that it seemed like things started to change a little during ballgames. I started to witness a little more aggression from fans. And it wasn’t just at what was happening on the field. I half expect fans to yell out and react negatively if things are going poorly for their team. A player makes an error, you react. Someone extends their hitless streak by striking out for the umpteenth time in the past 10 games: you boo them. Gonna happen.

This was something different. Fans starting to go at one another. And not just hometown fans razzing fans of the away team. But Angels fans yelling at Angels fans. And, believe me, I don’t think this is unique or isolated to Anaheim. Or any one team. Or any solitary sport. This is people. People in large groups means there are a lot of different types of people. And, you know what they say about bad apples.

Some teams’ ballparks definitely have different reputations than others. The same goes for fanbases. And that can only get worse depending on who that team may be playing against, as well. Dodgers playing the Giants? Yeah. We are now 8 years from that horrific incident in Los Angeles that left Giants fan Bryan Stow in a medically induced coma after he was beaten by two men on Opening Day at Dodgers Stadium.

A few stories that you may not have heard include a Giants fan that was shot and killed in Dodgers Stadium parking lot in September of 2003. Ten years later, a Dodgers fan was stabbed and killed in September of 2013 in San Francisco following a Dodgers-Giants game.

And just last week, Rafael Reyna, father of 4, was attacked on March 29 at that very same Dodger Stadium after the Arizona Diamondbacks faced the Dodgers. Rafael was on the phone with his wife and she heard him arguing with someone. His wife described hearing a loud crack sound followed by her husband moaning. He is now on life support with several head injuries including a fractured skull. A 47-year-old father of 4. He was at a baseball game.

I’m not claiming to know what led to that incident. I have no clue whatsoever. But, people are being beaten and nearly killed at baseball games. This is just mind-boggling to me.

This all leads to this past weekend. The final day of “Opening Week” at Angels Stadium. My wife and I got the fantastic idea to get last-minute tickets to the Sunday afternoon game that morning. We lucked out and ended up with perfect seats in the Club level on the 3rd base side. We dreaded a day sitting in the sun for an entire game. However, the stadium’s shadows started on the seats just two rows in front of us. Score. We must have said to each other three or four times how grateful we were to be in the shade for the entire game.

Sunday day game. Opening week of the new season. We knew that Little League Day at the ballpark would also mean there would be tons of other families with kids there. This couldn’t be any more ideal for our son’s 1st big league baseball game. Now 6 years old, we figured he would be pretty good about being able to sit in his seat for the majority of the ballgame and keep our “need to entertain him” to a minimum.

Sometime around the 3rd or 4th inning, my son and I took up the task of going back to the walkway to buy lunch for our family. He and I were excited to get legitimate stadium hot dogs. My daughter wanted a large, soft pretzel and my wife wanted some nachos (the ones in the souvenir helmet that we all agreed we would share).

Hand in hand, my 6-yr old and I climbed the concrete stairs to the walkway on the Club Level and started to navigate our way to the nearest concession area. In our path, there was a small congregation of people near an outside bar that is set up with a view of the parking lot. I recognized one of the guys (maybe in his mid-20’s) that had entered the stadium just after we did before the start of the game. He was being yelled at by another man and they were getting close to impeding our direct path down the walkway.

I tried to guide my son around these guys, unsure if they were friends just being very loud and goofing off, or if there was something more malicious afoot. About 4 feet away from us, the larger, older man reached out, basically gripping the other’s neck in his hand. I recall still being unsure of what I was witnessing. It seemed odd to me: the specific way he was holding the man’s neck and the fact that the man being held didn’t seem to be doing anything to fight against it at all.

The man grabbed a full cup of beer and half-tossed it on the younger guy, half-shoved it into his face; almost like he was punching him with the cup. Beer completely covered the man… and me… and my son. A third man entered the fracas, he also grabbed a beer and the same thing happened all over again. All three of us (if not others) completely doused with a full beer. I grabbed my son quickly and tried to maneuver around all of this. We barely got out of the way before one of the men picked another up and legitimately body-slammed him onto the concrete ground, just 6 feet or so from my son.

We raced past all of them at this point. It went from like a 3 to a 10 just like that. I felt so bad for my little boy. He asked me what was going on. We don’t watch boxing or wrestling or UFC or anything like that in our house. So, he very well could not have really understood what was happening at all. I told him they were fighting as I tried to do what little I could for his beer-soaked clothes with napkins. I sighed, knowing that both of us were going to have to spend the rest of the game, air-drying in our beer-soaked shirts, shorts, socks, and shoes.

We spent a few minutes just talking and biding time where we were. I was hoping to waste enough time that we could head back the way we came after everything was over. We saw multiple sets of security guards and even police pass by us during this time. My son’s innocence made me sigh when he asked as we walked back: “Is that bad guy in jail now, Daddy?”

After we got our food, I was anticipating my wife’s response at the story we had to tell. Only, it didn’t get told right away. Not as we planned, at least. When we got back to our seats, everyone was looking off to the left, toward the sections of seats closer to left field. There were a lot of people standing in that area. My wife then told me how there had been a huge brawl in that section that seemed to go on forever. We had just missed it.

I looked back toward the standing people and, sure enough, to make things more sad and almost incomprehensible: this is where, I’d guess, 40 plus little league kids had been sitting. My wife confirmed that for me. Parents of these kids, fighting…brawling… throwing punches and kicking. With their kids right there. Some of these men may be the coaches of these kids’ teams. Men who should be upstanding examples. My wife said you could hear the kids screaming and crying from our seats while this was unfolding. And who could blame them?

I know how all of this may paint me. I’m not a tough guy. I’m not a fighter. I got challenged to one of those “you and I are gonna fight after school… at the bus stop” kind of things when I was in 6th grade. I was that “class favorite/class clown” type of kid back then. So when one of the most athletic kids in my class said he wanted to fight me, it was big news at school that day. I won’t give you all the details, but, over the course of the day, everyone talking in shock about him challenging to beat me up gave him some sort of clarity. He ended up being the one — not me — that didn’t show for our 3:00 showdown. (I was very relieved!)

Truth be told, the only person I’ve ever punched in the face is my brother (sorry, Matthew). Seeing real fights makes me nauseous and freezes me a little. So, yes… as the Kinks song goes: I’m a lover, not a fighter.

As I said, I’ve been waiting for this time in my son’s life for us to start going to baseball games since before he was even conceived. I’ve been ecstatic that he even likes to watch baseball. Yet, here we are. There is no way in the foreseeable future that I feel any safety in taking him to see Dodger Stadium. That’s pretty much been out of the question since before Bryan Stow’s life was changed forever in 2011.

I came to terms with that years ago. I was sad that I would never be able to show my kids the ballpark that my Dad loved so much. But, it was okay since the Big A is so much closer and so much safer. I can almost hear Chavez Ravine mocking me now. “It’s not just us Dodgers fans anymore, pal.” And that may very well be the case.

I’ve taken part in some discussions on Twitter over the past couple of months or so regarding kids at baseball games. They’ve been more along the lines of: with ticket prices continuing to grow, the average household is getting squeezed out of the ability to go to the games as a family as much as they used to. For some people: it may just not be worth it at all. My day at the park for 4 ended up costing us around $125. That’s for the tickets, parking and all that food I mentioned. No beer or drinks for any of us. No souvenirs or apparel.

Some great ideas are out there: maybe seeming all the more ripe for the picking by some of the teams who aren’t even close to selling out on a daily basis. Why not try a kids are free under a certain age day of the week? How about some sort of Father/Son Day at the Park where tickets are discounted by a certain amount? How about a massive salute to Baseball Moms that does something similar? The MLB is working so hard to promote the game to the youth…it’s counter-intuitive if you are making it so difficult for them to get into the games with their parents.

I reached out to the Angels organization on Monday, the day after the game. I wanted to express my disappointment in the events from Sunday. I told them that I wasn’t ignorant. I don’t blame them for this day’s multiple incidents. I know they didn’t cause this the same way I know they can’t be expected to shut down any incidents immediately or even before they escalate.

So, what’s the answer? This is what I feel team owners and the MLB needs to look at. I’ve had this discussion with my Father-in-law multiple times, who feels they just need to eradicate alcohol sales altogether. I’ve laughed at him every time, pointing out the massive income at the stadium, advertising in media, and so on that would mean for the teams and the league.

Maybe there is some kind of compromise that has yet to be found. Perhaps something will have to involve restrictions on tailgating, as well. I’m well aware that some of you may be shaking your head and scoffing these ideas. I’ve been there. I’ve been going to games all my life. That includes my 20’s when I would have a few beers at a game. Extreme honesty: some of those games, I absolutely should not have been served another beer when I was. That can absolutely be done better at stadiums.

I don’t know what needs to happen. I just know that something does. In this day and age of reactionary changes (helmet laws in football, the netting getting extended in baseball parks), what is it going to finally take to make every day at the ballpark safe for everyone? People have already fallen to their death. People have been beaten nearly to death. It’s time for the MLB to act instead of waiting for something to react to.

You can read more about my connection to baseball courtesy of my Dad in an older blog post by clicking here.

I have a number of podcast episodes with fellow Dads where we talk about the connection and the bond that sports/baseball created for them. The Daddy Unscripted podcast is part of the Osiris Podcast network and can be found on pretty much every podcast platform, including Apple podcasts and Spotify.