A father who was berated into giving his son’s home run baseball to an angry Phillies fan explained why he handed over the prized possession, which was supposed to be an early birthday gift.
“I pretty much just wanted her to go away,” Drew Feltwell told NBC10 Philadelphia on Saturday.
Feltwell was one of six excited fans who sprinted toward a home run ball that Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader smacked during Friday night’s matchup against the Marlins at LoanDepot Park in Miami.
He insisted that he was the first and only person to grab the ball from the seats in left field, but a female, gray-haired Phillies fan refused to be a good sport.
“She was in the seat behind,” Feltwell explained. “I don’t know if she was standing up. Maybe? But I was watching the ball from almost the bat to where it went into that seat and kind of jumbled around and I was already going in and coincidentally, as soon as I was going in, it stopped in one spot and I just picked it up.”
Feltwell proudly walked back to his family, who were seated approximately five seats away, and placed the home run ball into the glove of his son, Lincoln, but that feeling of pride was short-lived.
Seconds later, the woman, who failed to obtain the ball fast enough, chased down Feltwell and started yelling at the dad.
Fan-recorded footage captured the woman alleging that Feltwell took the ball from her as she demanded the ball back, seemingly under the belief she was entitled to it since it was closer to her seat.
“I didn’t even see her walk up and as she reached for my arm, she just yelled in my ear, ‘That’s my ball!’ like super loud,” Feltwell added.
“I jumped out of my skin and I was like, you know, like ‘Why are you here?’ you know, ‘Go away.’ And she’s like, ‘That’s my ball! You stole out of – those are from our seats.’ And I said, ‘There was nobody in that seat,’ you know. She said, ‘That’s from where we were sitting,’ and she just went on and on.”
The father didn’t want to make the situation worse.
“I don’t even remember what she said, it was, you know, a lot of eyes on us by that time and the ball was already in his glove and she just wouldn’t stop and I mean, I’m literally leaning back as she’s in my face yelling and yelling and I pretty much just wanted her to go away because I had a fork in the road: either do something I was probably going to regret or be dad and show him how to deescalate the situation so that’s where I went.”
Lincoln claimed he felt like he had to give the ball to the screaming lady because she was never going to back down.
“I wasn’t very happy that we had to give it to her, but we can’t win,” Lincoln told the outlet.
“That was what we were there for,” Feltwell said. “We were there to get a home run ball. I thought I had accomplished this great thing and putting [it] in his glove meant a lot and she was just so adamant and loud and yelling and persistent and I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore.”
Fans nearby booed the woman who took the ball and the man sitting next to her. Her male partner eventually walked away, and she followed.
A Marlins representative apologized to Lincoln and gave him a gift pack that had baseballs for him and his sister, who was seated next to him during the game, according to a video posted on X.
Lincoln was even invited to meet Bader after the game, where he was gifted a signed bat.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
