Letters to John Oliver

BEFORE

April, 2025

Dear Production team,

My name is Jordan Skopp – Philanthropist, satirical truth-teller, whistleblower, and founder of FoulBallSafetyNow.com, the only national campaign focused on exposing the systemic neglect of fan safety in professional baseball.

For the past five years, I’ve been unveiling the curtain and peeling all the layers and participants of the little-known foul ball safety controversy — a tangled web of silence, complicity, and legal loopholes that allows Major League Baseball and its affiliates to sidestep responsibility while fans, including children, continue to suffer devastating injuries from foul balls at games.

This isn’t theory. This is fact — backed by 2,100 files of living, breathing documentation: interviews with victims, research on ballpark safety standards, legal analysis, and a trail of negligence that no major outlet has fully reported. Watch this 5-minute 2019 ESPN video and you’ll be shocked. I’ve interviewed broadcasters, players, even lawyers and judges who’ve remained disturbingly silent. The scale of this is staggering — and it’s just sitting here, waiting to be exposed.

You have the voice, the platform, and the editorial courage to unearth this hidden scandal on HBO, where it belongs. And yes, this issue is serious — but it also has that perfect John Oliver sweet spot: ridiculous legal doctrine, billion-dollar hypocrisy, hidden data, and a cast of complicit characters ranging from broadcasters to beat writers to the baseball industry’s PR machine.

This is a segment screaming to be made for your show. From ancient legal protections like The Baseball Rule (1913!) to players quietly warning their own families to sit behind netting — it’s absurd, outrageous, and darkly comic. Meanwhile, fans are being maimed while eating hot dogs and doing the wave, completely unaware of the real danger.

You could help bring justice. You could help save lives. And you’ll definitely make people laugh.

Let’s talk. I’d love to jump on a call and walk your team through what I’ve uncovered. I’m not looking for glory. I’m looking for the truth to be told. And I think you’re the right ones to do it.

Best,

Jordan Skopp
Founder, FoulBallSafetyNow.com

AFTER

July 2025

Hi John,

I’m reaching out about baseball fan safety since you’ve recently been taking in the romance and fun feelings that go along with minor league baseball. (Go Moon Mammoths!)

I wanted to flag an important issue that continues to plague baseball throughout America – the ongoing threat to fan safety in dozens of ballparks across the minor leagues and MLB Partner Leagues where teams are playing with little or no netting beyond the dugouts. Fans continue to get seriously injured by foul balls and bats entering the stands at high speed. Even in the MLB stadiums, there are ongoing fan injuries due to the lack of standardized netting height (high speed balls are sailing over the nets and cracking skulls). 

Check out Exhibit A, a well-produced 5-minute ESPN video from 2019 that demonstrates clearly what can potentially still happen on any given day in the minor leagues.

This is still happening in 2025. Maybe not in Erie where they extended the netting (finally, but only in 2024!).  

I wrote to your producers in April trying to reach you about doing a show on this issue then, and didn’t hear back. But now it’s very relevant given the huge response to your Moon Mammoths effort.

As I wrote in the April letter: 

You have the voice, the platform, and the editorial courage to unearth this hidden scandal on HBO, where it belongs. And yes, this issue is serious — but it also has that perfect John Oliver sweet spot: ridiculous legal doctrine, billion-dollar hypocrisy, hidden data, and a cast of complicit characters ranging from broadcasters to beat writers to the baseball industry’s PR machine.

As a life-long fan of baseball, I’ve found it 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. They have known for decades that fans would continue to be crushed, hospitalized, traumatized, even killed by foul balls — and they’ve continued business as usual all along. 

You had your fun in the minor league sun. Now we hope you take a different approach. We would encourage you to shine a light on the darker side of the professional baseball industry – their ongoing disrespect for fan safety.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Jordan Skopp

P.S. Since Last Week Tonight airs on HBO, you should know that Bryant Gumbel did a Real Sports segment on April 19, 2016 on foul ball risks to fans. Unfortunately, the full episode isn’t available publicly (perhaps your team could access it – we’d love to see it!)

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