MLB Fan Safety: US Senators’ letter hints at possible action

Congress may be ready to get involved in ensuring MLB fan safety.

Interestingly, it may be a headline on the website L.A. Taco that best explains a recent request by two Senators from Illinois about data related to MLB fan safety.  That headline reads: “A Foul Ball Killed a Fan at Dodger Stadium Last Year and the Dodgers Said Nothing about It.”

The website gave proper credit to ESPN for breaking the story five months after the death of 79-year-old Linda Goldbloom on Aug. 29, 2018, four days after she was struck by a line drive in the head during a Dodgers–Padres game. The ball sailed into the loge level just above protective netting off the bat of San Diego’s Franmil Reyes. It was the first death by baseball in MLB since a foul hit by LA’s Manny Mota took the life of 14-year-old Alan Fish almost 50 years ago, also at Dodger Stadium.

But Goldbloom’s death was a little different in that it was not widely known about all last winter despite the fact that the family had not kept it a secret. In contrast, Fish’s death was on page one of the Los Angeles Times five days after he was struck by the foul that killed him. Like Goldbloom, the youngster had lingered four days before passing. Ironically, MLB fan safety may have been taken, by default, more seriously before the “connected” internet age of kittens and puppies and presidential tweets.

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Hundreds of other fans have been struck with line drives since people began watching what we now call big league baseball, and some have been seriously injured (including very young fans), but Goldbloom’s death is somewhat more notable since it came the very year MLB had extended netting from home plate to the ends of both teams’ dugouts.

That particular change seemed a reaction to a two-year-old being struck in the face and critically injured in Yankee Stadium in 2017. Nothing punches up the ol’ MLB fan safety effort like a toddler taking a line drive in the face.

Therefore, however tardy it may seem, the request for “data on which seats at ballparks are most vulnerable to dangerous line drives” by Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth should not seem a surprise.

Their letter to Commissioner Rob Manfred also recommended a registry of injuries at MLB parks to “help evaluate the voluntary safety measures that many teams are implementing.” This seems a roundabout way of hinting that perhaps the net below the ball that struck Linda Goldbloom should have been higher. However, the designation of seats most in peril from line drives seems nicely focused and specific.

Obviously, line drives are the most serious threat to MLB fan safety although at least one fan has been killed (in 1932) by a thrown ball sailing over a first baseman and hitting a fan in the first row of seats.

The request by Senators Durbin and Duckworth seems a perfectly good way for everybody to start moving the discussion of fan safety beyond trivia – hey, the Providence Grays put up the first protective screen in 1879 – and into sensible action.