There is an immediate human reaction from Ohtani, the face of baseball throughout the world today, as he cringes and puts up a hand toward the direction of the blast. 

It’s a moment to realize the human element still exists — a world-class player feeling concerned about the prospect of hitting a fan. 

Yet, in that same moment, the FOX announcer makes a knee-jerk comment that ‘Shohei sends his apologies down the line to anybody that that foul ball scared.” 

Within a split second, we see together the human reaction of a batter thinking ‘gosh, no!’ Luckily it didn’t strike anyone — the net stopped it. So he returned to business as usual.

But just imagine if there weren’t nets. Before the Blue Jays put up some more netting in the corners at Rogers Centre in 2020, that Ohtani foul ball could’ve potentially crushed a fan’s head.  In any another ballpark where the net isn’t that high, it could have been catastrophic. 

Even at Rogerts Centre, a fan was injured by a 110 MPH foul ball that did sail over the netting in the 1st base corner in May 2024. https://www.foulballsafetynow.com/topps

Many professional ballparks remain cringe-worthy – particularly dozens of the PDL and MLB Partner League ballparks where netting is nowhere near high enough to stop dangerous foul balls. All of these professional players are going to bat knowing that their fouls are cringe-worthy.

Ohtani had a similar foul ball incident in August 2025, only that was at home in Dodger Stadium, and his foul ball rocketed over the netting down the first base line, hitting a security guard on the shoulder. The announcer made similarly sarcastic knee-jerk remarks in the moment after, pretending to speak as the security guard, saying ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. We’re good.’

Video footage: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DM_ovKasA-h/ 

We’re not good! We still have not committed as a baseball society to addressing and preventing these all-too-common occurrences. It’s not all home run celebrations and humor. Far too often, foul balls and bats are continuing to scream into the stands, with the potential to seriously injure or even kill. More must be done to stop the madness.