The injury was not publicly disclosed at the time because “the Dodgers generally do not make public reports of accidents that take place at Dodger Stadium,” the team said in a statement. “We avoid doing so out of respect for the privacy of the persons involved in the accidents and their families.”

Major League Baseball in a statement Tuesday defended the safety of its ballparks by saying it had increased the “inventory of protected seats.” The statement asserted that teams were “constantly evaluating the coverage and design of their ballpark netting,” though stopped short of recommending that the netting be raised, like it is in Japan.

“You can see right through the nets, so what’s the big deal?” Brody said. “I can’t understand why it took so long for them to even widen it.”

In December 2015, Commissioner Rob Manfred issued recommendations to all teams to install netting extending from the ends of the dugout closest to the plate to within 70 feet of the plate. The Dodgers announced that day that they would comply, but some teams held out, reluctant to alienate fans in expensive lower-level seats.

The Yankees were one of those teams but relented last January, a few months after a foul ball severely injured a toddler behind the third-base dugout. A disclaimer in place since 1913 and printed on the back of every ticket in Major League Baseball warns of the “risk and danger inherent to the game” and the possibility of injury from, among other things, “thrown or batted balls.”

But baseball has changed greatly since then, and the risk of injury to spectators has risen, mainly from the construction of new stadiums designed to bring fans closer to the action.

According to a study published last year in the William & Mary Law Review, fans sitting behind home plate are, on average, nearly 21 percent closer to the action at a major league game than they were 100 years ago — and the average amount of foul territory has decreased by the same amount. That reduces fans’ reaction time in an era that also features bigger, faster and stronger players.