Baseball kind of created the problem by adding seats to the danger zone. It had a bit of a snowball effect because it rewards fouling off and gets even more balls heading that way and even worse drags out the games with a bunch of fouls that players can't get to any more. I would have tried calling hitters out if they hit it out of play ahead of the plate on 3rd strikes before the netting.
Yeah, "foul ground" has really been minimized over the years. The new stadiums are crunched even more. I remember Carp/FP commenting how much foul territory has been taken over by new seats at Dodgers' stadium since it was built.
