Deadly Danger At The Ballpark

Have you ever thought about how safe you are at a major or minor league baseball game? Baseball foul ball safety advocate Jordan Skopp tells us you need to be concerned because the team owners aren't. You can learn more about Jordan on his Foul Ball Safety Now website.

Important information from Homeowners Be Aware:

Here are ways you can follow us on-line:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeownersbeaware/

Website: https://homeownersbeaware.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-siegal/

If you'd like to reach me for any reason, here's the link to my contact form:

https://homeownersbeaware.com/contact

Here's the link to the trailer for the documentary film I'm making: Built to Last: Buyer Beware.

🎧 If you enjoyed this episode, don't keep it to yourself! Share it with your friends and help spread the knowledge. Remember to hit the like button, subscribe for more insightful content, and leave a review to let us know your thoughts. Your support means the world to us! 🌟

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Announcer: 0:04

This is the move the world podcast interviews with people dedicated to making the world a better place with your host George Siegal.

George Siegal: 0:12

Hi everybody welcome to the move the world podcast where every week we introduce you to somebody who's doing something in their life or in their work their job to try and move the world and my guest today is a gentleman who's got a a big task at hand that he's trying to do and i'm sure you all will understand it when we meet him uh i'd like to introduce you to Jordan Skopp a full-time baseball foul ball safety advocate bringing compelling arguments to listening audiences for proper safety netting Jordan welcome

Jordan Skopp: 0:44

Thanks george thanks so much for having me.

Siegal: 0:48

all right jordan in a in a nutshell tell us what you're doing to try and move the world

Skopp: 0:55

understandably um understandably so uh i think the the moving that i'm pushing towards is bringing common sense to an industry that sorely needs it baseball you know another way of putting it can be described as the baseball maiming society and when people start seeing through how often these incidences come about i think they'll conclude that most insiders people that understand the game intimately the players the owners the broadcasters the baseball writers know it's a matter of if it's not a matter of if something will get crushed it's when and that's the epiphany that needs to be brought to light and i think people will be receptive once we get into this interview and i'm looking forward to getting into that with you so thank you for asking a strong question.

Siegal: 2:17

absolutely and you know what i think people would absolutely get it you know when i was um i thought i was the only one that felt this way until i saw your bio and what you were doing when i was a 16 year old kid i was with some friends at dodger stadium and we were just gotten all our food so we had like five or six 16 year old kids just stuffing their faces in the stands and a screaming ball came in a little bit away from us but it was close so close enough that it really got our attention and what we were joking about was what Vin Scully would have been saying of those kids stuffing their faces who just got drilled by a ball and how we would have been on television is kind of a laughing stock but now you take that forward to where people have actually been seriously injured and even killed at a baseball game and that's that's kind of insane to think that it could be that dangerous.

Skip: 3:04

yeah and it's it's funny that you bring up dodgers stadium the two deaths that have occurred at major league games amongst the fans were both at dodgers stadium one in 1970 probably similar unfortunately to the group that you were with a bunch of 14 year olds hanging out and allen fish got struck in the head and died a few days later and you know ultimately guys like Vin Scully and the producers who work for these shows have not had honest discussions with the fan base you're not at home watching vince scully hearing him say something like there's great risk it's only a matter of the next game or the game after before something gets crushed hopefully not a person could be a beer it could be a seat it could be a ricochet or off off a beer or a sea and hit somebody but alan fish had died in 1970.

Siegal: 4:13

I don't think people really understand too what buying that ticket what rights they're giving up when they walk into the stadium i mean you you can be in a commercial for baseball they can throw you out for doing something inappropriate if you're put up on the jumbo tron um you're basically there you're giving up your rights when you go in and get that seat and that obviously extends to their liability if you get drilled by a screaming line drive doesn't it?

Skopp: 4:38

Unfortunately it does and baseball has had their legal due diligence taken care of for for over a hundred years uh for most of those years the the micro print was on the back of the ticket where most families did not study it or consult with their attorney before attending a baseball game and now people even have to search harder on the e-ticket to find out that their baseball will not be responsible but i do know i do know this that baseball does whatever they can to keep it as broadcast as minimally broadcasted as possible so just think about it imagine if that micro print had gone up on the scoreboard or if somebody hacked dodger stadium scoreboard and put that legal jazz on the back the back of the ticket legal jazz up on the scoreboard all of a sudden families would be looking at it in larger and connecting the dots and wondering why am i sitting here with our growing family and are we in any jeopardy it would sort of heighten the assumed risk so in essence certainly one could say that no children should have ever ever been allowed in any of those sections since 1970 when Alan Fisher died at dodger stadium and if adults wanted to sit there and flirt with 100 mile per hour balls well then maybe that's okay but they know exactly what they're doing once they get to the ballpark they are signing a piece of paper and their kids are nowhere near them and they do want to flirt with danger well that's another arrangement.

Siegal: 6:42

well you know i got to believe i i still don't think people would not go i don't think that i think there's a lot of stupid things people do you see a hurricane coming and people go in and swim at the beach there's a thunderstorm people go outside and what i don't think people understand if you went out with your kid just to play catch in the yard and they throw the ball at you every now and then it misses a glove and hits somebody in the face or in the body and and we're not athletes and that doesn't really that hurts so if you're just even catching a high pop up at a baseball game or a home run ball or anything with your bare hands there's a reason those guys are wearing gloves.

Skopp: 7:15

even those things have their share of injuries with people breaking fingers and hurting themselves so there's all kinds of vulnerability when you go to such uh such an event i do know the frequency how often somebody is seriously injured from statistics where we're not talking fingers and nails we're talking heads and eyes and in 2019 in the last regular season when there was a full a full sleight of games in the major leagues and this is only from the major leagues there was 15 people maimed in a 26 and a half week season and all of those probably required some kind of emergency room visits and they're documented by kelsey mckenney from deadspin that's just one one example the los angeles times reported 4 500 people from 2012 to 2019 um based on an nbc report we took the math i i said 5 000 fans reported to first aid between 2012 and 2019 the la times guys suggested 4 500 but we're pretty close that reported to first aid at major league games now where most of those fingers and nails i would say probably but is it possible that in the hundreds there were concussions and lost eyes and crushed skulls i think so it's not it's not a stretch to say that because people do get hit in the head and certainly the people that have been coming to foul ball safety now and i'm not that social media savvy i have a handful of people that have been coming sharing their injuries including erwin goldblum whose wife also she was the second person who died at dodger stadium in the last 50 years she got killed at the end of august in 2018 linda goldblum and erwin's attended about six or seven of my virtual zoom calls this past year i had hired a publicist up until june of 2021 from november 2020 till june of 2021 i did hire a publicist and we held these zoom calls and some of the other people that showed up to these zoom calls and entertain questions from the media were two alexis's one was four when she was hurt four years old and one was ten both hit in the head and both inches from death little alexis who was four who's now around fourteen she's got some long-term post neurological things and and the other alexis from from from uh who also got her at a minor league game um she's uh she's recovering better but she speaks about her her her question her her scenario about what happened to her and she wrote about it in her college paper and what they're saying these impact statements which are coming out george are people don't want it to happen to the next person they don't realize people going to the games they look at foul balls and fun they don't look at foul balls and flirting with death yeah and you see that all the time you're right and and you see it all the time with with people with a kid in their arm trying to catch the ball or they're sitting there on their phones i think now they're compared to in the 70s 80s 90s even the early 21st century we didn't have a device in our hands that we were playing with instead of watching the game so the attention now on on what could be coming your way is far worse well even staring without blinking for three hours you can't protect your kid when management or owners are saying things like oh watch your kids or we have signs posted you can't get out of the way of a hooking 100 mile an hour hooking 100 mile an hour ball no more garcia para who played with the dodgers for a short time maybe when he was with the red sox maybe throughout his career would go to the railing when he was playing third base and tell the dad and the kid to switch seats so the dad would be an inch closer to home plate than he would then he or she would be the child you know it's like that's a little obsessive but he also knew those were the dangers oh you see how upset the players are you see you can see how devastated they are when they rock one into the stands rocket went in there and it hit somebody i think they probably feel horrible about that sure they do and and but they haven't done much to change the the establishment they tell their own families if you go to foulballsafetynow.com you'll see i stack the quotes when it's usually in the aftermath when somebody gets hurt um i got involved all the way in 2019 after that little girl got hurt in houston by al mora and you've seen or you've heard players say things usually in the aftermath of one of these injuries i've had minor league players there's about 5 000 minor league players that are trying to be major leaguers uh there's six or seven hundred major league jobs most of them will not make it through their journey it'll stop and they'll have to get her another kind of job but they're trying um so these minor leaguers bear the burden knowing they could be the next one to do the maiming in the minor leagues they tell their moms and dads but they're they're not going to get on the public address and say hey you guys need to sit with my mom and dad behind the nets you're all crazy and i have strong quotes from minor league players who will be in my forthcoming book when it when eventually does come out speaking of this double standard and i have baseball players who tell their own families sit behind the nets what about everybody else so there's a double standard and i hold everyone accountable and i think at this stage of the game there should not be no such thing as a baseball hall of fame and when i first started writing two years ago i self-published some articles i said things didn't take me more than a few weeks to come up with things like baseball writers definitely do not deserve to be in any kind of hall of fame you don't preserve you don't put yourself in a place of higher honor when you've been sort of complicit you've been you're journalists i hold you guys to a higher standard in new york where i'm from there's probably 25 sports writers who all attended journalism school um and they have not to this point been able to convey or haven't had the courage to say enough is enough we need to stop this double standard so obviously if baseball players would tell them all their own families to sit behind the nets why not survey the baseball riders and ask them where their families are sitting and how come they're not conveying it to their readers yeah it does when you look at ballparks now like

Siegal: 14:42

we have tropicana field here in tampa there's now a net that goes down the sidelines.

Skopp: 14:48

ah tropicana field i have something to say about that uh-huh okay but there i want to hear that but there are nets netting now that goes down the first base and third base side so people on the lower level aren't going to get clocked but if you're in the 200 or 300 level you could still get drilled by a ball pretty easily sure so with tampa bay i have a video up there before there were nets above the dugout if anyone wants to take a look at foul ball safety now it's right there up on the website it shows before nets were up a ball going in between two guys and if that ball had hit one of those guys that would have been the end of baseball in tampa bay that year the nets would have been up there would have been an outcry um so if anyone wants to check it out please do the only way that we'll know that tampa bay or any of the other 30 professional stadiums are good to go and are maiming free is if an independent netting council some sort of regulatory agency says we're sending in our architects and engineers it's not up to mlb to tell us how high how far how wide the nets are going to be it's up to this independent netting councils architects and engineers they could figure out how fast the balls and go how often oh you mean it's every day balls travel at 100 miles an hour is it every 50 years oh it's more like every day oh okay well then why were the nets only up to there and not up to there you can't walk past the building when bricks are coming down from time to time they would say you need to have the cement in place to hold the bricks i'm just giving an example yeah you know this is 53,000 balls foul balls every year in the major leagues now some guy who wrote a bit more about it says well only 20,000 or so reached the seats all right so still 20 000 reach the seats how many are going at x amount speeds plenty and nobody talks about the minor leagues which is a mess in 2021. george i called 100 minor league ballparks there's 30 major league clubs there's 120 minor league clubs remaining i connected to close to 100 of them all i did was ask them simple questions where do your nets go at least 42 had told me no nets past the end of dugouts where did that little girl in houston get crushed past the end of the dugout mrs goldblum at dodger stadium she died behind home plate nobody talks about home behind home plate at dodger stadium or the other 29 other ballparks where there's higher levels she died 93 mile an hour ball dodgers took a year did they take care of it the day after did games continue for a full year pretty much so yes so it's like there's no way if george if we're walking down the street and a brick comes close to even hitting us nobody's walking down that street till the thing is taken care of it's ridiculous but that's the way it goes with baseball.

Siegal: 18:05

Exactly and at minor league ballparks you're closer to the action than you are in a major league ballpark so the ball would in theory be traveling faster.

Skopp: 18:12

Hey like i said architects and engineers know how fast the balls are reaching people they everything is now statistics we know the ball with the exit velocity george stanton the guy on the yankees if anyone wants to google a foul ball a home run he hit um it was shot out to right field and it hit the kid in the head now i'm wondering if it went an inch or this way or that way maybe it would have tooken out his eye and this was a few weeks ago um uh call a giant gian caller john johnson you could google home run angel hernandez cbs something like that you'll see the video you'll see it in slow motion and you know i'm looking more into that incident i'm going to ask somebody if it just went this way or that way would have taken out his eye at like a half an inch i mean it hit him directly in the head in the noggin uh and supposedly he was all right he shook it off i was like wow i don't know and how so if the left is bad at 106. how long does it take you know did it hit his head at 92 or 84 miles per hour i mean i mean this is what's happening now if if there's an independent ending council and they say this can continue to be this cannot be i go by what they say i i don't care if people catch pop-ups balls come up and down but it's above my pay grade i just want to have a real discussion a first-time discussion but clearly in the minor leagues today what a mess for at least 42 no nets past end of dugouts in peoria illinois if people go to foul ball safety now i actually rented out an airplane and it towed a banner over peoria three four months ago when they opened up their season because they didn't even have netting over the dugout and we were just talking about that the video that i have up on my website which compares to peoria i had tara who produces commercials for me take the peoria scenario of today and show the tampa bay picture of yesterday seven years ago whatever it was what can happen to fans when there's no nets above the dugout and peoria had the nerve to open up this season they had no baseball last year because we were all shut down or at least the minor leagues were shut down last year and they gave some some excuses that the net was uh on order from europe how would any buildings department allow a building to operate when the cement was on order from europe hello get the cement up there don't allow the people to walk underneath what is this so that's what's going on peoria and they're an affiliate of the st louis cardinals peoria illinois and the st louis cardinals probably worth billions of dollars they're paying the salaries of the peoria chiefs to whack the ball where people are in harm's way and most families even in 2021 they haven't reached that epiphany of outrage they haven't reached once they do find out that they've been sort of part of a part of a weekly or a bi-weekly possibility of a terrible statistic they're going to say wow we were really having good times under false pretenses if there's any way i knew my four and six-year-old were possibly going to be taken to the emergency room or be part of a statistic i don't think they'd be part of it so we haven't we haven't yet gotten the message to the general public and that is that is a problem.

Siegal: 22:05

Now do you remember a film that came out years ago with james khan it was called rollerball and it was a futuristic game where they played on this rink and balls would go firing into the stands and kill people and that was just part of the game and they still had a packed crowd and somebody would die and they would just drag him out of there and and to me that really sizes up the mentality i think the people that have are injured would relate to you but a lot of people are going to be like oh it's a baseball game why are you worried about this and i don't know that they understand the danger unless they really see it and and and realize what's going on. I think they would call us killjoys for being concerned about this.

Skopp: 22:46

Yeah unfortunately there is a lot of negativity now espn did a piece it's up on the website two years ago i thought it was a great piece it's actually parallel or in line with what i'm trying to convey over here at valuable safety now where it's a five minute video it's a high quality production it shows balls hitting people with good video not youtube video it's just very very good stuff so what happened they got their 750,000 views they got their 4,300 comments 80 of those comments were negative they're like mind your own business uh uh to pay attention to the game put down your phone so that seems to be the case when there's a large number on 43 4300 espn also did another kind of survey but maybe i'm not sure how exactly how they did it and i put that up on my website because it said 78 of the fans do agree that netting is a good idea um but espn also has a major contract with mlb and oh so so what i've been doing since that video i thought it was a great production you know for 18 months that's been sitting nobody's been commenting in it nobody's been promoting it espn hasn't continually promoted him like why aren't they continually promoting it so for the last two months i spent more than a thousand bucks promoting it because i feel it's important to keep this conversation going and i'm like wow this is a great production tara can't do that for 500 bucks you know but espn could do this and they cost them a hundred thousand to do this i'm going to use it if they're not going to promote it i'm going to promote it because it's uh it's a great piece so you know i'm going to continue to promote that piece i just want to bring an epiphany of outrage to the fan base i think once the fans realize this they're not asking for netting if you look at my website the major league report the minor league report in 2021 when i called the box offices the major leagues 30 teams there when you look at the seating charts it doesn't speak of netting and transparency only like three out of the 30 teams have websites on their seating charts that really show anything to do with nets now that means the general public is not demanding it if the general public was demanding it all 30 of the mlb teams would have wow oh yeah here's where we should be sitting where our kids and this is what's recommended and this is what the independent netting council said you should be doing or you know it doesn't speak of you know netting transparency or or awareness uh when i called the minor league cities i spoke to nearly 100 minor league ballparks and when i and when i spoke to the young person who was working in the box office or whoever i talked to they would say oh you're the first person asking about where the nets are i'm like exactly exactly oh i don't get that call let me find out you know and then you look on their seating chart and they would have to find out but it was like the general public in 2021 is still not demanding it if they were it would be nuts well the reality is it doesn't change your view that much because you get used to it really quickly and the most expensive seats in the house the ones behind home plate have been behind netting for years and those people pay a premium to sit there in this in a safe environment yes there's no just no doubt about it but it's sort of like regulatory agencies came in in the 1970s and they said sorry parents you don't have any more discretion your kids have to be seat belted in the back that's the law and they should have been here in 1970 and said something to the same effect that hey you can't bring your kids you guys want to work something out with the dodgers or any other teams and flirt with danger okay that's your call you know in japan they allow you to sit in certain sections they give you a helmet a glove i doubt you're allowed to bring your kid but they call them the excitement see it's our culture is so secretive about it and i i do say that baseball is a secret of culture run by lawyers and i believe when Manfred took the keys from Selig he said to sell it set to man for you make sure those secrets stay secret and those secrets are all those injuries that are at mlb headquarters that if they ever saw the light of day and they have it there's only been a few independent studies like nbc and the espn report from time to time there's some decent journalism um but that's basically the uh the word that that selig said to manford you make sure the secrets stay secret in courts when people have tried to sue usually they don't make it out of the lawyer's office because the lawyer says sorry you're not going to get anywhere that microprint on the back of the e-ticket or the ticket they they covered their ass and you guys don't have you don't have a shot and then in some cases they've gotten early into the proceedings and the judge will say same thing and then once in a while some somewhere in the middle of the proceedings the judge will say something like okay let's see what baseball really knew so it's called discovery and that's when baseball gets nervous because they don't want baseball to be revealed they don't want the secrets to be revealed so they'll make a settlement with that particular plaintiff and then there was a case recently in the last two months which has been some momentum uh this thing called willful and wanton willful want on spelled that way where it implied the judge is allowing a case to proceed in illinois for um i think his name is eddie rybarski who was smashed in the face uh three years ago in chicago uh and the rybarsky case can continue is continuing um and the judge said something which is a strong implication the will for wanton implies that baseball consciously knew in advance the nets could have gone further or higher and they made a decision just to do it minimal and like that don't work and let's hope that case hopefully wilful and wanton becomes a household name and 70 million fans will be you know wearing t-shirts that say willful wanton baseball because they're no different from big tobacco i have it up on my website baseball knows the risks let's not kid anyone they know the risks and they know a handful of souls every year are going to feel displaced bitter they're going to want an apology they'll never get an apology they'll want their medical bills paid for and it has a long-term effect they don't want their children playing baseball they won't these people need to be welcomed back into the game how many hundreds of or thousands of people who had a head injury and had long-term injuries over the last you know 50 years don't watch the game don't even turn it on anymore don't even want their kids playing baseball a lady who interviewed with me for the book jenny in 1979 at shea stadium she was 14 years old she lost her eye and when she became a mom years later she told me that she was relieved that her son chose not to play baseball so it has this long-term effect and yeah these people need to be welcomed back into the game and and their impact statements need to be heard and i have a handful of people that are sharing and hopefully more that keep finding me so let me ask you this how do you support this quest of yours how do you how do you keep this going yeah so you know i i welcome anyone who has expendable dollars to make a statement with me and there's an airplane to rent and a banner to tow and things to do but yes it's mostly been self-funded um and you know i hope that uh you know we'll get the attention of people uh and create an epiphany of outrage or somebody who's more influential than me that tells me hey jordan this is really great i thank you so much for bringing this to me you can go back to selling real estate we got it from here we're going to put some significant dollars into it and we're going to make some real statements um so that would be amazing i would be like yes i'll be here cheerleader i'm glad i introduced it to you now you take it from here or uh the book will be coming out when the time is right when i have an audience to contribute to to distribute to um i'm looking into you know getting advocacy in japan because in japan this is already readily accepted in their culture so why not get a country behind me if that's what it takes for them to sign a petition because there is two petitions on my website one is to reveal the baseball rule one is for expanded netting extended or expanded netting um so you know i may just get 10,000 signatures from japan with some social media influencer over there so i'm looking into that right now because that may help maybe they'll you know be interested intrigued and reading my story uh you know whether it comes out in an ebook form whether it comes out in hard copy but in the meanwhile i'm still collecting stories people are finding me at foul well safety now they could talk to me in confidence they could talk to me on the record with my co-writer brendan we interview people we're we're really really getting some really compelling stories from folks um so you know things are uh things are really happening and um i'm excited about the journey so it stays i'm cool about it it's great having programs like yours george that come aboard sometimes you may meet somebody like yourself that takes a next step with me creating documentaries or or doing whatever we need to do just to keep this issue going so i'm open to hearing anyone from anyone with any question concern or or if they know anyone who's been injured by foul balls they could talk to me in confidence or anyone out there has a expendable dollar or two and feels like we can make a statement we can have a conversation so it's a great opportunity george and you know there's so many so many things that these people need to know about so do you think you moved the needle at all do you do you think the reason more netting has gone into major league parks has anything to do with what you're doing or are they starting to realize the danger because they are adding more just not enough no but it's it's piecemeal and as i was suggesting the willful wanton scenario which is baseball needs to bring in the outside regulatory agencies and the story get it done there's 42 ballparks that are hosting games with no netting past dugouts where did that little girl get crushed past the end of the dugout you need to get this done it's not you know it's foreseeable it's predictable there's thousands of balls that reach the seats there's three times as many more games in the minor leagues um when i suggested 4,500 uh injuries from 2012 to 2019 that was just to me that was just the major leagues you know so we're talking about 13 500 in the minor leagues and between 2012 and 2019 there was approximately 2,400 major league games a year and approximately 9,000 minor league games a year so you know this is the i have documented children incidences mostly recorded from the major leagues i have 43 between 2008 and 2019 serious injuries to little children and this is stuff i just found through newspaper clippings uh serious injuries from 2008-2019-43 most of those were accounted from the major leagues but it also suggests maybe there was three times as many more of those children hurt in the minor leagues because there's less media coverage there or there's less documented uh you know consistency so how do you think major league baseball feels about you i i don't think they really they just hope i go away but i'm not i don't think i've really made any you know i've gotten some great articles yes uh people magazine early times when i say great nothing's great about him it's great that this publicity team that i had got me some earned media but they were non-baseball journalists that reported on it and it was just a summary of the issue nobody's written really any sort of long piece uh baseball journalists why is non-baseball journalists writing about this baseball journalist like i said in new york there's 25 of those folks that work full time and they're journalists and they should be asked the same question as baseball players do you tell your own families and i'd love to hear their reactions they're not going to talk to me i've gotten a few sarcastic responses from some baseball journalists and they said oh it's the owners they usually have to take care of it no man you're at every game you see every pitch of every game you should be you should have taken a position on this a long time ago or they should be on an elevator or an airplane with me and we should i should ask them what some of the baseball players say and look at some of the quotes at foul ball safety now you could go to the major and minor league reports i stacked up all the quotes i could find of players that said about their own families of that they will not sit near uh without netting they will not do where there's no nets and it's funny this coach who died i bring him up mike cuba um he died in 2008 as a player in the 1980s he was the guy he was a coach in the minor leagues and he got struck got struck in the neck but they're all stupid they're wearing helmets but just the same yeah he's they're wearing helmets um yeah it's just there was some proactive movement there by mlb all the minor leagues and the maybe the league so following season started wearing the helmets okay so there's some proactive initiative there but mike coolbaugh when he was a player in the 80s his wife is quoted as saying mike would always tell me to sit behind the nets we're talking in the 1980s so how ironic he's the guy who got struck but he would tell him he told his wife you get you know during the game if she was talking to a friend you go behind the nets and they knew this back in the 80s they all these players knew this mine elite players are telling me this yeah now i mean and but they're on the dream of being they're on the journey of being you know major leaguers so you know they're not going to be whistleblowers they yeah they tell their own mom and dad that they do but they it can't be a good feeling burying the burden knowing they could be the next one to do the maiming yep i would love to hear a conversation between you and bob costas about this i'd love to them to sit on an airplane with me because i think it'll be like students or flight attendants students isn't a great time these days flight attendant please switch my seats you know that kind of thing so you'd be taken off the plane no doubt yeah yeah or get this guy out of here exactly last question sure what will you consider success well how will this how will you come away from this feeling like you moved the world um i think once once there's some recognition or some whistleblower you know a baseball player or or a journalist that puts their foot down and does something about it and you know george says that's enough i mean jeff passing from espn went on pbs john yang shortly after the little girl got hurt in houston and he said all the right things the regulatory agencies and nets but what happened it was very short-lived as far as i know jeff is still working for espn collecting a paycheck and most of his work is baseball related so is it it's nice that people say strong things after these incidences but the fact is i was the only one that i know of that contradicted major league baseball manfred said something in 2019 that everyone's doing significant changes the next time we open up baseball again in 2020 all i know is i called 2020 spring training before we all shut down with the covet i spoke to box offices that hosted those 30 major league teams and found out that 16 1 6 still had no netting past end of dugouts and then i did more work again this year in the minor leagues and found out that more than 40 percent of the stadiums ballparks that i spoke to still had no nets passed into the dugouts this is things get crushed past dugout and i don't understand why we're continuing on as a baseball community in society so um yeah as far as i know as far as i'm concerned all owners should be forced to sell the team it's time for changing of the guard and certainly stop praising yourself baseball players and baseball writers and don't put yourself in any sort of hall of fame until this matter is addressed until those people that i know of and probably hundreds more are fully addressed apologized to and their apology would be accepted because then these people these victims would only accept their apology if baseball was serious with their apology that means nobody else is going to have the same scenario as those folks with the head injuries and that kind of thing so well i'm not going to hold my breath but i certainly am uh am rooting for you in that sense of it needs to be safer there's no question about it thank you george this is a really great platform and i really appreciate everyone listening and anyone has any thoughts just go to valballsafetynow.com all right.

Siegal: 41:45

Jordan Skopp continued success i hope you moved the world let's let's hope you have some success.

Skopp: 41:50

thank you again george thanks again.

Siegal: 41:52

all right that's going to do it for this episode of move the world as Jordan was talking about you can see what he's been doing for years it's an uphill battle to try and make a difference but he continues to do it and that's what we all need to do is find something in our lives so we can try to move the world we'll see you next time