The Mets in June extended the protective netting at Citi Field, and with the netting now going about "halfway into the outfield," the ballpark seems to be "on the cutting edge of netting installation," according to Wallace Matthews of the N.Y. TIMES. MLB could "not say definitively if any other teams have pushed the screens as far as the Mets have or plan to." Mets RF Jay Bruce said, "I’ve never understood the arguments against it." Matthews notes there are some fans who "prefer the way it used to be, when netting had much less of a footprint" in a ballpark. One fan said, "The net is in the way. It’s annoying." Devin Basile, another fan, said, "I’m fine with it." The Mets "declined to explain why they were moving aggressively to install more screens now." But they said that their new netting was 97% "invisible." Meanwhile, Matthews notes the Yankees "have not extended the screens beyond the 70 feet" that MLB asked for two years ago because of "complaints from their fan base." Yankees COO Lonn Trost said, "We have fans that communicating with us that they are upset that we’re even considering it." Trost said there are enough fans who have complained that "we've taken notice." He said that "no modifications to the existing netting" at the ballpark were "likely to be made until next season at the earliest." He added that one thing that "concerned the Yankees was the placement of the cables from which the new netting would hang." Trost: "That cabling can affect the view of other fans, it can affect the TV shots, a lot of things. That’s not going to be the deciding factor but it’s something else that has to be looked at" (N.Y. TIMES, 7/24).
