Morning Briefing: Francisco Lindor wants more protection for fans

Francisco Lindor of the Indians wants teams to extend the netting used to protect fans after a 3-year-old boy was hit by a foul ball he hit Sunday in Cleveland.

The ball he hit went into the seats on the first base side just beyond where the netting stops.

After the game, Lindor said of the boy, “He’s in the hospital right now. I came over immediately and tried to find out where he was. The paramedics were checking him here.

“Once I got out of the game, they let me know that he’s doing OK. He’s doing good. He’s in the hospital getting checked out. He’s talking and answering questions and his eyes look good. That’s a good sign.

“Hopefully, every test they run on him comes back good.

“You don’t want that to happen to anybody, especially a little kid. As soon as I hit it, I knew it was headed to somebody. I hit it hard. I got over on the ball. It stinks.

“I encourage every MLB team to put the nets all the way down to the foul pole. I know it’s all about the fans’ experience to interact with the players. I completely get that. You want to have that interaction with the players, getting autographs and stuff. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure everybody comes out of the game healthy. We’ve got to do something about it. Everybody feels bad. If we can put the nets a little farther down, it would be a a lot better.”

A woman was hit in the head by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium in June, and the Dodgers announced plans soon after to extend the protective netting at a future date.

The Chicago White Sox and Washington Nationals have also announced plans to extend netting.

That stinks

Two guys in Chicago wanted to celebrate the restored the beauty and cleanliness of the Chicago River by organizing a 2.4-mile open swim but have run into a bit of a problem: fecal bacteria. Which are the last two words you want to hear when trying to convince people to go for a swim.

Doug McConnell and Don Macdonald wanted to have the swim in September, but it has been delayed by the city for at least a year.

According to Michael Hawthorne of the Chicago Tribune, “Along the Riverwalk, where the race would have ended, levels of fecal bacteria have spiked more than 4x higher than state standards this year.”

The swim was intended as a celebration of how much the cleanliness of the water in the river has improved since the 1970s, McConnell told the Associated Press.

Which just proves, as I always told my mom when she told me to put on a clean shirt, “Mom, there are different levels of clean.”

Sports poll

Six new members of the Baseball Hall of Fame were inducted over the weekend. Which of the following Dodgers do you think deserve a spot in the Hall of Fame?

You can vote for as many as you like from this group: Steve Garvey, Orel Hershiser, Gil Hodges, Don Newcombe, Fernando Valenzuela, Maury Wills. Vote in our poll at https://poll.fm/10368688 or email me your choices at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. Results will be revealed next week.