Cheers from (no) peanut gallery

With tears, the Clarks left in the second inning because Silas has a peanut allergy and had trouble breathing. But the Barnstable family returned to Fenway last week and sat nine innings in seats where shells did not go crunch underfoot.

Peanuts were banned last Sunday from an entire 226-person section of the ballpark for the second time this season as part of a growing effort to accommodate fans with allergies. From ivy-covered Wrigley Field to the new Nationals Park in Washington, nearly half of Major League Baseball teams set aside seats for at least one game without peanuts and Cracker Jack — which also contains peanuts.

“We could never chance it down in the regular seats with peanuts everywhere,’’ Karyn Wildes, 44, of Marshfield, said last Sunday at Fenway as her 11-year-old daughter Madison tapped a black-and-pink baseball mitt on her knee while waiting for a foul ball. “It just makes her feel normal. There’s so many things she can’t do,’’

At birthday parties, these are the children who cannot eat the cake. They sit isolated at specially designated tables in the cafeteria. On schools trips, parents pack their snacks and when other children go help themselves, they reach for a bag of grapes.

But there they were at Fenway last Sunday in an airy block of seats looking down on the Green Monster. Children with cotton candy stuck to their chin and pennants and foam fingers like the one worn by 7-year-old Jack Maloney, who proclaimed to all that the Red Sox were number one.

“He wants to do what all the other kids are doing,’’ said his mother, April Maloney of Lexington. “He can go to school tomorrow and tell everybody, I went to a Red Sox game.’’

But for fans like Brian Gannon, 37, peanuts are as a much a part of the baseball ritual as beer and foul balls. They stuff their pants pockets with peanuts before games or, as Gannon did last week, stop by a supermarket for a “small’’ 48-ounce bag on the way to the ballpark.