(09-02-2018 08:50 AM)micahandme Wrote:  Don't you think it's simply safety protocol when lightning strikes? I think they have to wait 60 minutes without a lightning strike to let people back into the stadium now. And then, 20 minutes for a re-warm up for the players.

In the old days, I don't think they cleared stadiums for one lightning strike anywhere in the visible radius of a stadium.

Yep, they're over protective now.

Are there more late games than there used to be?

Well they sure overreacted this time. Isn't it about time to ask why? The weather channel's advertising rates go way up when there is a land falling storm. In other words the greater the public panic the more people watch and the more people watch the more they make.

With a high pressure system dropping down to Carolina's it was bound to lose strength before reaching land. So our Category 4 storm of century when it was still 2 days out came in as a category 1.

Precautions for any hurricane are in order. Boarding up windows, stocking up on batteries and water and food, etc, is S.O.P. as any of us who have lived through 6 decades of hurricanes know.

A category 1 is bad weather with some spin off tornadoes, and high surf at the coasts.

But here we are with the marriage of the Nanny State and for profit Weather reporting and the result will be "the boy who cried wolf." The public will get tired of the overhyped reports and the reporting scare tactics to drive ratings and when the weather conditions are favorable for intensification and the air mass over the U.S. is not repellent of the tropical systems we will get another Katrina, or Camille, or Andrew and there will be oodles of folks who will have tuned out the warnings because so very many times they will have been over hyped. And then we will a a for profit catastrophe.

What putzes we've allowed TV to make us!

Even if the hurricane landfall wasn't thankfully a Category 3+, the area is going to get torrential rain, flooding, roads washed out, and extensive damage.

General thoughts on some of the posts in this thread...

Not sure i understand the resistance by some people, when teams and stadiums make safety improvements for fans and players. What is there to get mad about?

In baseball, i go to nearby Fenway a few times each year. Fans are right on top of the action. There's always someone getting popped by a foul ball at a game. Back in the 80's my father got amazing tix in the 7th row behind the Sox on-deck circle, so close to field. An Oriole righty named Michael Young (i think) just clipped a foul ball and it shot one section over from us like it came out of a cannon. Some poor dude who put his hands up to protect himself and who was paying attention (all Sox fans pay attention) got popped in the face, i can still hear the sound, and his nose looked like it exploded open, freakin blood everywhere. Seemed every game fans would get injured, but thankfully this year the Red Sox hung netting out to near each foul pole.

Last year at Yankee Stadium a 3 year old girl with her grandfather got slammed by a foul ball behind the visiting dugout and needed facial reconstruction surgery etc, and i don't actually know how she survived or how she has been doing. Couple years ago at Dodger Stadium a guy got spiked with a splintered bat near his temple or eye or something.

Hockey extended the netting behind the goalie after a woman was killed by an errant slapshot. Why would there be any resistance to extending netting, so that fans can safely enjoy themselves?

Closer to home, in around 1980 when i was 12, my mother got a "lawn jart" sent straight down on the bridge of her nose at a neighborhood party by a kid horsing around 40 feet away, blood everywhere, almost lost her eye, and needed reconstructive surgery. I mean, it's a good thing in my experience that sharp-tipped metal lawn darts have been banned in favor of the rubber kind. How can that be a bad thing? Or how can the switch away from games played with sharp metal projectiles in your backyard be controversial or be considered causing the supposed "pussification" of America?

I mean, i could list a couple dozen other examples of serious injuries that I've witnessed or my family has experienced first hand that would've been prevented with minor safety changes (guy getting his arm stamped and crushed off and almost being completely pulled into the machine at a plastics company, etc). It's 2018, society is supposed to progress. I could go on about how seatbelts have saved lives, and cars have been constructed for better safety which has saved lives, etc, etc.