PREP NOTES : Huntington Beach Police Cry Foul After Direct Hit

Foul balls can be unpredictable and sometimes dangerous for spectators at high school baseball games.

But at Huntington Beach High, foul balls have even dinged a few cars passing by.

Huntington Beach’s baseball field, on the northwest corner of campus, is bordered on the north by Yorktown Avenue, a busy surface street.

For the past few years, foul balls, particularly those hit by left-handers, would occasionally sail over the backstop and out into traffic.

“They would short-hop into cars a few times,” Oiler Coach Mike Dodd said.

Last summer, a foul ball during a Huntington Beach-Mater Dei summer league game hit the wrong car--denting the roof of a Huntington Beach police car.

“The car stopped, and the officer got out,” Dodd said. “The next thing I knew, the entire SWAT team was there--five or six squad cars, even a helicopter. They wanted the name and phone number of the kid who did it.

“Our parents and I had to explain to them that it was unintentional, that the kid who hit it didn’t mean to do it.”

After an hour of discussion, the matter was resolved. The police officers went on their way. The players returned to the game. There were no arrests.

The fallout?

The Huntington Beach Unified School District authorized $6,000 for a 20-foot-high protective net that borders the north side of the field. The net, which is strung between telephone poles, was finished in October.

The protective net has been effective, except once.

“The first foul ball of the year went over the net and right out into the street,” Dodd said.