AUBURN — The Auburn Doubledays started their 2016 season on June 17 knowing the fans who sit near the dugout have a little more protection from game action. The City of Auburn has installed protective netting at the top of the first and third-base dugouts at Falcon Park where the Auburn Doubledays play their home […]
AUBURN — The Auburn Doubledays started their 2016 season on June 17 knowing the fans who sit near the dugout have a little more protection from game action.
The City of Auburn has installed protective netting at the top of the first and third-base dugouts at Falcon Park where the Auburn Doubledays play their home games.
Major League Baseball (MLB) had recommended the netting last December, the Doubledays said in a news release issued in late May.
The Auburn Doubledays of the New York-Penn League are a Single-A, short-season (summertime) affiliate of the MLB’s Washington Nationals.
The recommendation — issued at the baseball winter meetings in Nashville, Tennessee — stipulated that teams shield fans from balls and bats in all field-level seats within 70 feet of home plate. Minor League Baseball subsequently endorsed the recommendation, the Doubledays said.
“We felt like that set an industry standard that we wanted to make sure we met,” says Mike Voutsinas, general manager of the Auburn Doubledays, who spoke with CNYBJ on June 16.
The City of Auburn’s Department of Public Works, which oversees Falcon Park, contracted the work to Clay–based C.W. Rich, Inc., according to Voutsinas.
The installation process lasted two days, he adds.
The City of Auburn purchased the net, while C.W. Rich provided the support system, says Voutsinas.
The new forward-facing netting at Falcon Park will shield fans sitting in box-seat sections 102 and 103 on the first-base side and sections 108 and 109 on the third-base side.
In all, the new netting will protect 160 box seats. Both a forward facing and overhead net will protect sections 104 through 107 in Falcon Park, the Doubledays noted.
Falcon Park can seat 2,800 people, according to Voutsinas.
The Doubledays opened their 2016 season on June 17 at home with a 3-0 win over the Batavia Muckdogs, a Miami Marlins farm team.Auburn won four of its first five games of the new season.
The team has posted an attendance increase of 22 percent over the last two years, according to Voutsinas.
“We actually had the highest per-game attendance increase in the league last year. We’re just looking for another building-block year and keep moving things in the right direction,” he adds.
In 2015, Auburn finished the season with a 36-38 record, good for fourth place in the six-team Pinckney Division of the New York-Penn League, according to the website Baseball-Reference.com. The Doubledays’ season-long attendance last year was 50,670, up 14 percent from 2014, according to the website.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com