Dear 60 Minutes,

I’m Jordan Skopp, and I am pursuing a determined and passionate mission that’s due to blow the doors off a red-hot scandal that deserves your treatment.

As a life-long fan of baseball, it’s been difficult to come to terms with the fact that my favorite sports league, MLB, is in fact a house of cards, clinging to a mythology and a locker full of secrets that must see the light of day. MLB holds the key, but they choose not to unlock the truth files that would alert fans to the regular occurrence of serious injury and the ongoing risk of attending games.

Fans are at heightened risk right now in 70 cities where minor league and MLB Partner League teams are playing with little or no netting beyond the dugouts. And the injury toll keeps rising. I know of two children critically injured in the minor leagues in the summer of 2023, in addition to a man blinded in one eye at an MLB game last year, and a woman who was badly hurt at a Toronto Blue Jays game this spring.

Why is this still happening? I know why. I’ve pulled the onion back all the way, inside and out, and am ready to discuss my findings with a receptive news organization.

Mine is a fan-led indictment of the professional baseball industry for failing to protect, let alone educate, fans of all ages who have attended games without understanding the extreme risks posed by dangerous foul balls. My ongoing advocacy campaign with Foul Ball Safety Now seek to hold MLB accountable for the legacy of unnecessary injuries and deaths, and to compel action at the highest levels (courts and Congress) to end the Baseball Rule and require adequate netting at all ballparks. I argue passionately that it is high time for accountability in professional baseball, not only to take immediate action to protect fans from unnecessary risks from dangerous foul balls, but also to look back at all of the ways that baseball owners, executives, broadcasters, journalists, even players and coaches, have failed their fans.

Five years ago, I founded Foul Ball Safety Now as a vigil of one up against a giant industry, and began earnestly gathering evidence of a widely-overlooked scandal in professional baseball – the frequent occurrence of dangerous foul balls causing serious fan injuries and even deaths. After wondering why this keeps happening, I stumbled into a massive cover-up by what I now call the Baseball Industrial Complex, and I set out to confront this problem head on, like Jeffrey Wiegand did with Big Tobacco.

The first hint something was wrong was the stone-cold silence in response to my generous $100,000 offer in 2019 to pay for any two MLB teams to extend netting. The silence spoke volumes, and sent me down this path of discovery.

I’ve conducted thorough (and ongoing) research, including over 70 compelling and exclusive interviews with foul ball injury victims, MLB and minor league players, and other insiders to the game. It’s been fascinating to hear players and other insiders admit to me that they warn their own families not to sit in exposed seats, yet nobody is alerting the rest of us to the dangers. They’re both the killers and the victims, strangely enough. While sharing their own revelations with me – one of the big reveals in this package – players have come to terms about their regrets of sitting silently while fans are slaughtered by foul balls. These players and insiders have been forced to continue on with business as usual, not speaking out about foul ball threats that fans face every day, for fear of being ostracized by their peers or even sanctioned by MLB if they do.

What’s particularly upsetting is that I’ve identified at least 45 children who’ve suffered foul ball injuries since 2008, most of them head injuries, often with significant and lasting impacts. I believe no children should be allowed inside any ballpark that isn’t certified safe from dangerous foul ball risks – a controversial stance that I believe in 2024 could help gain attention and build momentum towards solutions across the board.

I have interviewed two girls (both named Alexis) who were each young children when they got hit, and one of them continues to struggle with ongoing neurological impacts.

It’s not just the children who have suffered, either. I have interviewed Erwin Goldbloom, the husband of Linda Goldbloom who was killed by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium in 2018, as well as their daughter Jana Brody. (Jana authored a 2023 book ‘Sit Behind the Nets’ about her mother’s death, in which she referred to me and Foul Ball Safety Now repeatedly.) Then there’s Rick and Jenny who each lost an eye to foul balls; and a pregnant woman by the name of Annette who was hit and bruised in the stomach and worried she would miscarry (thankfully she had a healthy baby). All of them are supportive of my efforts, and would most likely agree to on-camera interviews with you, which I’m happy to help arrange.

There’s no closure or resolution for any of these victims while the problem remains unaddressed.

On December 7, 2022, Major League Baseball acknowledged, in other words, that they have been serving dirty water to the fans throughout the history of baseball and were going to make some changes and improve the situation in the minor leagues — but not until 2025. Even then, based on everything I’ve learned thus far, the risk of serious injury or death will likely persist. Keep in mind that the minor leagues host 3x as many games in a season as MLB does.

Watch this 5-minute well-produced ESPN video from 2019. It shows in great detail what can potentially still happen on any given day in at least 70 cities, where there is no netting past the ends of the dugouts.

Unfortunately, the media hasn’t really been on this case since, certainly not with broadcast quality treatments.

The opportunity for 60 Minutes to fill that void is ripe.

In addition to the ESPN video from 2019, there was an HBO segment on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel that aired April 19, 2016 (You can watch two trailers/excerpts of it, but I haven’t been able to find the full segment anywhere, despite reaching out to the HBO production staff. It was episode 229). Here is the trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miiahEyxSTI

And here is a bonus clip that covered the way Japan has addressed foul ball risks to fans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyidtI-uNXw

NBC News reported in 2019  that over 700 fans had been injured by foul balls from 2012-2019 at only four out of the 30 MLB teams parks, and if we factor in the additional teams, that would be roughly 5,000 fan injuries over the same period. None of this data includes the minor leagues where 3x as many games are played. Notice that for some reason the NBC video component is no longer accessible.

There are also possibly 100 local newscasts that are easily accessible on YouTube that chronicle one foul ball fan injury incident after another in the last decade alone.

Amongst the producers at 60 Minutes and a large viewing audience, this is worthy of all our time. Please feel free to check out www.foulballsafetynow.com. On the Media page you can see previous earned media coverage in national and foreign outlets (NYTimes, L.A. Times, People, Japan Times, Korea Times, etc.), some of which resulted from the 7 press conferences I hosted for major media about this issue. I’m also still issuing a consistent flow of press releases up to the present, including three recent releases highlighting the Topps foul ball injury trading card controversy this summer.

I have a lot of time and money invested into my commitment to Foul Ball Safety Now (multiple sixfigures spent over 5 years and counting). I’ve tried many approaches, including flying plane banners over the MLB Field of Dreams and over a minor league ballpark where there is still no netting above the dugouts. We’ve collected and built an infrastructure of an epiphany of outrage over the last 5 years, and I think you’ll agree that MLB’s ongoing silence is deafening.

I’m not out to make friends, I’m out to save lives here. I will remain a gentle force, and I think once you get to know me, my bite isn’t as bad as a 100MPH foul ball in between the eyes. I believe 60 Minutes is the perfect partner to work with on this.

Can we schedule a call to discuss?

Thanks,

Jordan Skopp

718-627-6767

https://www.foulballsafetynow.com/