Phil Welch Stadium receiving upgrades to protective netting

By Riley Funk

Safety netting will be replaced and expanded at Phil Welch Stadium, with the hope of it being ready just in time for the summer baseball season.

The project to replace the protective netting will cost approximately $115,000, according to city documents, and will be funded by the parks sales tax. The funding was passed by the city council at its meeting March 4.

Chuck Kempf, director of St. Joseph Parks, Recreation and Civic Facilities, said the current netting doesn’t extend beyond the dugout areas, so the new netting has been needed for the past couple of years to better protect fans from foul balls.

“People that were behind the dugouts, people that were down in the gathering spaces, down the first base and third base lines, really had no protection from line drives,” Kempf said.

Kempf said it’s not going to protect fans from every foul ball, especially ones that get up in the air more, but it will provide fans an extra boost of safety.

According to city documents, the new netting will have a similar look to what currently sits at Phil Welch. The addition to the park would extend the netting out to the light poles on the outside of each dugout, along the first and third base lines and will reach up to 15 feet high. The netting won’t extend to areas such as the park deck.

Kempf said the social aspect of a Mustangs game brings out many people from the community, so it’s important to provide protection throughout the ballpark.

“There’s a significant number of folks that go to those games that aren’t watching every single pitch … they’re not watching every single ball that’s coming off of a bat,” Kempf said. “It gives a little bit of confidence to those folks that they can turn their back on the field for a few minutes and not, you know, not run the risk of getting hit with a ball that they just didn’t see coming.”

The hope is the netting will get installed quickly, just in time for summer baseball.

“It should be installed before the Mustangs first game,” Kempf said.

The St. Joseph Mustangs will play Baldwin City Blues in the home opener at Phil Welch Stadium on May 29.