"Maybe this gentleman fell so that the Rangers will now really open their eyes and raise the rails everywhere else, because next time - and I hate to say this - somebody's going to die."
A year to the day after Hollye Minter told me that, somebody did.
On Thursday, a man attending a Major League Baseball game between Oakland and Texas at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington toppled over the railing that separates the front row of seats from an open area behind a left-field video board. Shannon Stone, a 39-year-old firefighter, was attempting to catch a ball tossed in his direction by the Rangers' Josh Hamilton when he fell 20 feet, suffered injuries to his head and arms, went into full arrest and died at a hospital less than an hour later. Witnesses say Stone, who was at the game with his only child, 6-year-old son Cooper, was bleeding heavily but conscious as he was taken from the area on a stretcher. According to A's reliever Brad Ziegler, who was in the visitors' bullpen in left-center, Stone was waving his arms when he told police, "Please check on my son. My son was up there by himself."
So, who is Hollye Minter and why was I talking to her on July 7 last year? At the Ballpark's first Opening Day in 1994, Minter fell out of a steep embankment of seats known as the Home Run Porch and lived to tell about it. I asked her to tell me about falling from an upper deck the day after Tyler Morris survived a 30-foot fall out of the same stadium's club level.
At the time of her accident, Minter said, "I don't care if the railings obstruct my view, as long as nobody else falls." When reminded of that statement in the wake of the Morris fall, she told me it gave her chills.
Yesterday, Rangers Ballpark's first fan fatality brought tears to Ziegler, distress to Hamilton (who was merely obliging the fan's call for a souvenir) and something to think about for Texas team president Nolan Ryan. Minter, who remains a Rangers fan, says 30-inch railings along the Home Run Porch were raised only days after her accident 17 years ago, but that other railings in the stadium remained at their original heights. Since then, several falls from upper decks in other stadiums have forced officials to at least consider design alterations in the interest of fan safety. Even lower-level seating sections aren't immune to tragedy, as evidenced last year at Milwaukee's Miller Park.
According to an Associated Press report, Ryan stated after Thursday's game that it was too early to talk about railing evaluations. "Tonight, we're not prepared to speak about anything further than the accident and the tragedy," he said. "That's where I'm going to leave it."
