ELY –Fans gearing up for a summer’s worth of baseball tournament at Veteran’s Field here will have increased protection from foul balls and pop ups inadvertently flying into the stands. Duluth Nets installed new netting this week with money from the Ely Baseball Association, which has been funding improvements to the field.

Duluth Nets usually makes a variety of fishing nets. They have more than 130 years of experience, and even provide their expertise to the U.S. Forest Service and other contractors.

This week Rory Rasmussen, the company’s production manager, and Joshua Tigner from the company spent a couple of days here suspended in the air in front of the baseball field stands as they installed three new safety nets.

“The material is used and manufacturing process is the same for these as for our fishing net, only these are way bigger,” Rasmussen said. They installed three separate nets, one in front of the covered stands, 55 x 34 feet, and one on each side of that in front of the bleacher, 75 x 34 feet and 60 x 34 feet.

Some quick math shows that Ely baseball fans will now have 6,460 square feet of protective netting as they cheer for their favorite teams at Veterans Field.