Changwon: The South Korean baseball club NC Dinos will have yet another series of home games postponed due to safety checks at their ballpark in light of a fan’s death.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) announced Tuesday that the three-game series between the Dinos and the Doosan Bears, scheduled for April 15-17 at Changwon NC Park in Changwon, some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, will be played at a later date.
The Dinos are still reeling from the death of a fan on March 31, two days after she had sustained a head injury in a freak accident during a game at Changwon NC Park. A piece of aluminum panel fell off a window of the Dinos’ office above a concession stand and hit the roof of the snack bar before striking the late fan and her younger sister, who suffered a broken collarbone.
The KBO scrapped the three-game set between the Dinos and the SSG Landers scheduled for April 1-3 at Changwon NC Park. Then the league moved the April 11-13 series between the Dinos and the Lotte Giants from Changwon to the Giants’ home in Busan, just east of Changwon. The Dinos will still be the home team and bat last in those three games.
For the Dinos-Bears series, however, the league was unable to move the games to the Bears’ home in Seoul, Jamsil Baseball Stadium, because their co-tenants, the LG Twins, are scheduled to play there from April 15-17, too.
The Dinos, the municipal government of Changwon, and the city-run Changwon Infrastructure Corp. formed a joint task force last week to handle the aftermath of the tragedy and to devise preventive measures. They have been conducting extensive safety inspections at the stadium, and the KBO said those checks will spill well into next week.