Wel­come!

Pitch­ers and catch­ers reported for duty mid-​February to attend early work­outs.

Spring train­ing gives spec­ta­tors a rea­son to break free from winter’s grip and look for­ward to baseball’s open­ing day games.

Hall­marks of tra­di­tional base­ball game snacks are peanuts and Cracker Jacks. The worry for those suf­fer­ing from peanut aller­gies does not melt away when they go to a ball game.

Enjoy­ing America’s favorite pas­time is get­ting to be a bit friend­lier towards those with adverse reac­tions to roasted peanuts. Sev­eral ball­parks offer ded­i­cated whole seat sec­tions, suites or even entire game days devoted to no peanuts allowed.

While no sta­dium can tout being com­pletely “peanut-​free”, being “peanut con­trolled” gives fam­i­lies some mea­sure of assurance.

Roughly, fifty mil­lion Amer­i­cans suf­fer from some sort of food allergy. While peanuts are the most com­mon food allergy, milk and eggs are the most preva­lent among chil­dren.

No sin­gle food allergy poses a greater threat over another. Even a small expo­sure of the dan­ger­ous food can set off a seri­ous reac­tion.

With peanuts, the nut, the shell or even the fine dust par­ti­cles can inad­ver­tently trig­ger a strong inci­dent.

Food allergy reac­tions are unpre­dictable. The way a body reacts to a food aller­gen one time can­not pre­dict how it will react the next time.

We don’t know if a reac­tion is going to be mild, mod­er­ate or severe. One should always be pre­pared with emer­gency med­ica­tion, just in case.

Read food labels. Make a habit of review­ing all ingre­di­ents in pre­pared foods. Salad dress­ings and mari­nades may hide many aller­gens.

Since 2006, food man­u­fac­tur­ers in the United States are required by law to list the ingre­di­ents of pre­pared foods. They must use plain lan­guage to dis­close whether their prod­ucts con­tain (or may con­tain) any of the top eight aller­genic foods — eggs, milk, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, shell­fish, and fish.

Plan ahead at the base­ball field. Arrive early to avoid the crowd and any poten­tial for peanut expo­sure. Peanuts will likely be in and around other areas of the ball­park like con­ces­sion stands, open seat­ing areas and per­haps the restrooms.

Pre­vent­ing expo­sure to peanuts is the best way to pro­tect any­one with an allergy to them. Treat the sta­dium or sum­mer ball fields like any other pub­lic places. Play it safe and let’s play ball.