The now-viral saga of a Phillies fan appearing to demand a home run ball from a father and his young son has taken another twist — after an innocent woman was wrongly accused of being the culprit.
The drama began on September 5, when Philadelphia outfielder Harrison Bader launched a home run into the stands at LoanDepot Park in Miami. Footage shows fans scrambling for the ball, before Drew Feltwell emerged with it – placing the souvenir into the glove of his 10-year-old son, Lincoln, who was celebrating his birthday.
“I was already ecstatic, like got Bader’s home run ball, and I get to put it in my son’s glove and that was, it was already enough,” Feltwell told NBC News.
But a woman in a Phillies jersey quickly approached, shouting that the ball was hers.
“Something touched my arm, and then she just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ like, so loud,” Feltwell recalled. He added: “There was nobody in that seat… She said, ‘That’s from where we were sitting,’ and she just went on and on.”
Reluctantly, Feltwell took the ball back from his son and handed it over, later explaining: “There was kind of a fork in the road, like, I’m gonna go one direction and then probably regret. Or go this direction and do something in front of my kids that, you know, like a teaching moment.”
As clips spread online, some internet sleuths believed they had identified the woman. But Cheryl Richardson-Wagner was stunned to find herself at the center of false accusations.
The New York Post reports that Cheryl has since had to take to Facebook to set the record straight, writing in a post: “OK everyone. I’m NOT the crazy Philly Mom (but I sure would love to be as thin as she is and move as fast)… and I’m a Red Sox fan!”
Support poured in from friends and strangers alike. “We are really upset that someone would make such a ridiculous claim,” one user commented. “Cheryl we got your back.”
The incident earned the woman the nickname “Phillies Karen”, especially after new footage showed her clashing with other fans, arguing with a man in an Eagles jersey, and flipping off entire sections of the crowd while holding the ball aloft.
Online reaction was scathing. “Who takes a baseball from a kid? An entitled Karen,” one YouTube commenter wrote. Another insisted: “Bleacher Rule #1: If you catch it in mid-air, it’s your souvenir. If it is not caught, it is a live ball.”
But others pointed to a gray area of fan etiquette. One viral post argued that Feltwell had moved across “roughly 10 seats, ending up directly in the woman’s area. By doing so, he invaded her space and effectively blocked her chance to catch the ball.”
Another fan said the woman could have made her point without confrontation: “If I was the woman, I would have said something to the father, without causing a scene, and let the kid keep the ball. This way you still make your point without causing a viral moment, and you allow the child to have the ball.”
The fallout overshadowed the Phillies’ 9-3 win, but Lincoln’s birthday ended on a high note. Marlins staff handed him a goodie bag in the stands, and after the game he met Bader, who presented him with a signed bat.
The team shared the moment on X with the caption: “Going home with a signed bat from Bader.”
Reflecting afterward, Feltwell said he had no regrets. “I wish I had the ball for my son to put in his room next to the bat, but if I had the ball, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the bat, so it worked out fine.”
As for the woman, he isn’t expecting closure. “Even if she gave the ball back, I imagine it would be a hasty handoff with her walking away. And that would still be hard for her to do.”
The mistaken identity element echoes another recent viral mix-up. Earlier this summer, a Dublin man named Andy Byron found himself bombarded with messages after being confused with an American CEO of the same name caught in a scandalous Coldplay concert clip.
“I started getting messages from the lads asking if I enjoyed the Coldplay concert — we were having a bit of craic about it,” Byron told The Sun. But soon strangers flooded his LinkedIn inbox, accusing him of misconduct. “The actual Andy took his LinkedIn page down so everyone started messaging me—it got so bad that I had to turn all my notifications off.”
For now, the Phillies fan at the center of the ball controversy remains unidentified, while Cheryl Richardson-Wagner continues to remind friends she’s a Red Sox supporter, not a “Karen.”
And for Lincoln Feltwell, the memory of his 10th birthday won’t be about the ball or the shouting match — it’ll be about the bat, the handshake with Harrison Bader, and the day the Phillies made sure a kid went home smiling.
Featured image credit: X(Screenshot)
