A young child had to be taken to the hospital after getting struck with a hard-hit foul ball off the bat of Cleveland Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor at Progressive Field on Sunday (July 21).
The three-year-old boy was sitting a few sections past the protective netting, which runs from dugout to dugout, when the baseball hit him. He was driven to a local hospital and is in stable condition.
After the game, Lindor told the media that he felt terrible but was glad the boy was doing well.
''It stinks, man,'' Lindor said. ''You don't want to get nobody hurt. I have heard the kid is doing well. He's in the hospital. He's getting checked, and all I know is he's in stable condition, and he's doing good. In a way, that makes me happy, but it stinks, you don't want that to happen to anybody, especially a little kid.''
He also called on Major League Baseball to expand the netting to the foul poles to prevent other fans from getting hurt by hard-hit balls into the stands.
''I encourage every MLB team to put the nets all the way down,'' Lindor said. ''I know it's all about the fans' experience of interacting with players and I completely get that. You want to have that interaction with the fans, getting autographs and stuff, but at the end of the day, we want to make sure everybody comes out of this game healthy, and we got to do something about it."
The league is considering plans to extend the netting, but Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters in June that those changes are unlikely to happen across the league during the season.
It is the second time this season that a child has been injured by a foul ball. In May, a young girl sustained a fractured skull, subdural bleeding, brain contusions and a brain edema after she was hit in the head by a foul ball off the bat of Chicago Cubs outfielder Albert Almora Jr.
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