Family refuses minute of silence for dead fan

The family of a baseball fan killed in her seat has dramatically banned the Major League team from honouring her in an ugly legal scrap.

A moment of silence won’t be good enough for a Dodgers fan who is now a widower.

Erwin Goldbloom was at a game at Dodger Stadium last August with his wife, Linda, when she was struck in the head by a foul ball and later died at the hospital of a fatal brain injury. Last week, the team offered to hold a moment of silence for Linda before a 2019 game, but Goldbloom declined, asking instead for something more tangible.

“We don’t need their sympathy. We want action,” Goldbloom told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” on Wednesday. “If they agree to make changes to improve safety for fans, then I’ll go down there.”

The couple was sitting in the loge level on the first-base side of home plate for the Dodgers’ August 25 game last season.

A Padres batter hit a foul ball that cleared the protective netting and hit Linda, 79. She died four days later, though it went largely out of the public eye until ESPN confirmed in February from the coroner’s report that her cause of death was “acute intracranial haemorrhage due to history of blunt force trauma” from the baseball hitting her.

While Goldbloom’s family did not attempt to hide the cause of death — even saying the “end came by a foul ball at [Dodger] Stadium” in an email notification the day she died — the Dodgers made no public mention of the incident, nor did MLB.

Dodger Stadium has renovated its fan safety net.

Goldbloom confirmed the two sides previously reached an undisclosed settlement over his family’s lawsuit seeking damages, but he said he won’t be going back to any Dodgers games until action is taken to better protect fans.

While all 30 teams expanded their protective netting before last season, there have still been calls for further safety measures in ballparks.

The report outlines that Goldbloom is yet to receive a response to letters he wrote to a Major League Baseball official and the Major League Baseball Players Association asking for them to support his campaign for improved fan safety and the establishment of a fund to aid injured fans.

“We don’t have anything to announce at this time,” a Dodgers spokesman told ESPN.

Dodger Stadium has expanded its netting, per MLB recommendations, but that was not a factor on the play that killed Goldbloom.

In the top of the ninth inning in a game between the Padres and Dodgers on August 25, San Diego’s Franmil Reyes fouled a Kenley Jansen pitch back and to the first-base side of the stadium.

Goldbloom, who was seated in the second deck in section 106, row C, with her husband, was struck, though television cameras broadcasting the game did not follow the ball or capture the moment.

Goldbloom’s daughter, Jana Brody, told ESPN a stadium usher came down to check on her, after which EMTs arrived to take her to the hospital.

She was unresponsive even after emergency brain surgery and was kept alive on a ventilator for three days. On August 28, her family took her off life support.

Originally published as Family refuses minute of silence for dead fan