Monday, April 5, 2010

Peanut-Free Baseball

It's opening day here in Cincinnati! Our kids are 5 and 2 and still haven't been to a Reds game. Both girls are severely allergic to peanuts, and we'd have to wipe down the seats and worry about them touching or stepping on peanuts and peanut shells. Their skin would react to the residue, so we wouldn't want to drag it home on our shoes. Rowan is still at the age where she'll pick food up from the ground and put it in her mouth, and most games have been past their bedtimes anyway. At this point it's just not worth the stress.

I think it's really exciting that more and more Major League teams are starting to offer peanut-free sections on certain nights. The San Diego Padres are offering 1 game, the St. Louis Cardinals are offering 3 games, the Seattle Mariners are offering 4 games, and the Red Sox have 2 games. For more info, visit peanutfreebaseball.com

To prepare for the event, the Padres will power wash the seating section, have trained emergency responders aware of the sections needs, remove peanut items from the vendors in the immediate concourse area above the section, post "No Peanut Zone" signs around the section, and staff the section with ushers to help insure compliance.

As far as I know, the Cincinnati Reds do not offer peanut-free sections for games. I contacted them today to see how we could make this happen. I would love to take our girls to a game without worrying about a reaction! I'll post more info here if we actually work something out.

3 comments:

  1. I hope they do offer peanut free sections soon! I'm allergic to peanuts but I want to the game today anyway and now I'm dealing with hives because of the ppl sitting around me eating peanuts. Its crazty smoking is banned because it hurts ppl but nobody thinks about peanuts when there are millions of ppl that are allergic!

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  2. We would love to take our two girls with peanut allergies to the game but we are afraid we would have to call 911 while the Reds are up.

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  3. My husband took our daughter who is considered "an 11 severe" to peanuts and we didn't even think about the peanuts! They were only there for an hour and he brought her home and we immediately gave her Benadryl because she was itching. Our allergist suggested that exposure can actually make allergies worse so a peanut free area would be a relief to the growing number of parents with these children.

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