Seventy-nine-year old Linda Goldbloom was killed by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium in late 2018. While her husband reached an undisclosed settlement with the team, he and Goldbloom’s family say the team can do more to improve safety.
The family of a 79-year old woman killed by a foul ball during a Dodgers game is asking the Los Angeles-based team to improve safety at Dodger Stadium.
“The first batter fouled a ball … that came and hit her right in the cheek,” Erwin Goldbloom told KABC Tuesday. “[It] came so quick we didn’t have time to react. Nobody did in our area.”
Erwin’s wife, Linda Goldbloom, died after attending an August 25th game between the San Diego Padres and L.A. Dodgers. Struck by a high-flying foul ball, the woman was rushed to a hospital.
She did four days later from traumatic head injuries caused by the impact.
Her daughter, Jana Brody, told the New York Times the impact was like a bullet.
“I would love to see higher nets,” Brody told the Times in a Tuesday interview. “The trajectory of the ball can only get hit so far until it starts to arc and come down and then be a more manageable ball to catch or whatever. But where she was sitting, there was no chance for it to lob over. It was a straight shot.”
Brody told the Times she hadn’t been at the game with her parents. But as the months went by, she wondered why her mother’s death hadn’t been made the news. The Dodgers certainly hadn’t tried to publicize the incident, and nobody from the media seemed interested in doing the same.
She told the Times that she spent a while pouring over records, finding only one other story of a fan being killed by a stray ball at Dodger Stadium.
In the years since, numerous safety improvements have been added to baseball arenas across the country. According to the Times, Goldbloom died ‘during the first season in which all 30 stadiums in Major League Baseball had netting that extended at least to the far edge of each dugout.’
“I realized it was our responsibility to tell,” Brody said. “Nobody knew. That was important to me to get just the awareness out—yes, the netting got widened, but it didn’t go vertical, and that would have been a huge for my mom if it went up, too.”
Erwin Goldbloom’s said the same.
“If they would’ve raised the vertical net, I think the ball would not have hit us,” Goldbloom told ABC, recounting the moments after his wife was struck.
“They should make more of an effort—MLB, not just Dodgers,” he said. “The past is the past. We can’t change that. We just hope that MLB will make it safer for other people.”
With MLB fans sitting closer than ever to home base, Brody says the league should raise its netting high enough that line drives fall short of the crowds.
“I would love to get the nets extended as far as they can go,” she said. “You can see right through those nets. I don’t know why they’re hesitating.”
Goldbloom, notes the Washington Post, settled a wrongful death suit with the Dodgers. The terms prohibit him from discussing the award, or whether he was allotted any form of financial damages.
Sources
A baseball killed a woman at Dodger Stadium, MLB’s first foul-ball death in nearly 50 years
Family of Fan Killed by Foul Ball at Dodger Stadium Calls for More Safety
Husband of Dodgers fan fatally struck by foul ball: ‘We didn’t have time to react’
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