Monday night's Chicago White Sox game will be one for the history books, as the team will debut a new safety feature at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The Sox began the process of extending the protective netting to the foul poles earlier this month following a series of foul ball injuries across the league this season.
Crews began to install the new netting on July 10 during the All-Star break and the team will play its first game with it up against the Miami Marlins beginning at 7:10 p.m. CST.
Guaranteed Rate Field hosted two games last week -- the annual Double Duty Classic and a police vs. fire charity game -- with the new netting, but Monday marks the first Sox game with the new feature.
The last time the team extended the netting was before the 2018 season, stretching it as far as both dugouts, a move mandated by Major League Baseball.
But several high-profile incidents with foul balls gone awry renewed a push for extending the netting even further.
Perhaps the most jarring was in May when Chicago Cubs outfielder Albert Almora hit a foul ball that struck a young fan in Houston, Texas.
A woman was later hit by a foul ball off the bat of White Sox slugger Eloy Jiménez in Chicago on June 10.
Chicago Baseball
Most recently, on Sunday night in Cleveland, Ohio, a similar incident took place at the game between the Royals and Indians when a foul ball from shortstop Francisco Lindor went past the netting and into the crowd. A 3-year-old boy was struck but expected to recover.
The Pittsburgh Pirates, Texas Rangers and Washington Nationals are among other teams that have also announced plans to extend netting.
The MLB commissioner has said that extending the netting is a decision made on a case-by-case basis due to the varying configurations of each ballpark.
