Report: Players twice requested additional protective netting in collective bargaining

The issue of fan safety is again a hot topic in baseball after a woman was seriously wounded by a broken bat at Fenway Park on Friday night.

Major League Baseball players requested additional netting at big-league venues in each of the last two rounds of collective bargaining, FOX Sports' Ken Rosenthal reports.

The players' union asked to extend netting down the foul lines, and even to the foul poles in the interest of fan safety during labor meetings in 2007 and 2012. The owners, however, have a contrasting viewpoint.

"Some owners are afraid to upset the fans that pay some of the highest ticket prices, when in reality, it's an effort to protect those very fans," said Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Brad Ziegler, a member of the negotiating committee for the players' union.

"(The owners) seem afraid that fans will lose access to the players - autographs, getting baseball, etc. - and that will cause those ticket holders to be unhappy. Or, that they'd have to watch the game through a net. Fans behind home plate pay the highest prices, have the same issues, and yet those seats are always full."

Tonya Carpenter, the victim struck in the face with a bat shard at Fenway Park, was sitting between home plate and the third-base dugout, just outside of the mandatory netted area.

Commissioner Rob Manfred will likely revisit the issue of protective netting, and the topic will be a hot-button issue when baseball's collective agreement expires on Dec. 1, 2016.

According to a 2009 study by Sports Illustrated, only one fatality has occurred at a major-league ballpark as a result of an errant ball or broken bat, when a 14-year-old was killed by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium in 1970.