What should have been a heartwarming moment for a father and son at LoanDepot Park in Miami quickly spiralled into one of baseball’s most viral fan controversies.
On Friday, September 5, Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader blasted a home run into the left-field bleachers during a road game against the Miami Marlins. In the stands sat Drew Feltwell and his 10-year-old son, Lincoln, celebrating the boy’s birthday.
When the ball ricocheted through the crowd, Feltwell managed to scoop it up, placing it proudly in his son’s glove. “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,” he told NBC News.
But what happened next turned the night upside down.
Video shared online shows a woman in a Phillies jersey marching up to Feltwell as he embraced his son.
“Something touched my arm, and then she just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ like, so loud,” Feltwell recalled. “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.’”
He insists the ball was loose and no one was sitting in the seat it landed in. “There was nobody in that seat,” he said. “She said, ‘That’s from where we were sitting,’ and she just went on and on.”
After a tense exchange, Feltwell reluctantly pulled the ball back out of his son’s glove and handed it to the woman. His reasoning: Not to escalate further in front of his children.
“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,” he explained.
The confrontation didn’t end with the ball. New footage shows the woman later clashing with other fans in the section, even walking over to a man in an Eagles jersey before returning to her seat and flipping off entire rows around her. At one point she raised the ball in the air with one hand while giving a middle finger with the other, drawing jeers and thumbs-down gestures.
“Who takes a baseball from a kid? An entitled Karen,” one YouTube commenter wrote. Another added: “Bleacher Rule #1: If you catch it in mid-air, it’s your souvenir. If it is not caught, it is a live ball.”
Others, however, pointed out the gray area of “baseball etiquette.” One viral post even went as far as to argue that Feltwell has deliberately left his seating own area to “end up directly in the woman’s area. By doing so, he invaded her space and effectively blocked her chance to catch the ball.”
Another tweeted: “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.”
Despite multiple calls on social media for the woman’s identity to be revealed, her name is currently unknown (as of this writing).
Of course, this story also comes just days after a CEO went viral for appearing to “steal” a cap from a young fan at the US Open.
Fortunately, the story ended on a positive note for young Lincoln. After the game, Phillies staff and Marlins officials stepped in. A Marlins staffer handed him a goodie bag and wished him a happy birthday.
Then came the ultimate gift: Harrison Bader himself met Lincoln and presented him with a signed bat.
The Phillies’ official X account shared the moment, posting a smiling photo captioned: “Going home with a signed bat from Bader.”
Reflecting on the night, Drew Feltwell said he had no regrets about giving up the ball. “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,” the father added.
As for the woman, Feltwell 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,” he said.
The Phillies went on to win the game 9-3, but the bigger story was in the stands. What should have been a simple souvenir sparked debates about fan etiquette, viral outrage, and the fine line between passion and entitlement.
For Lincoln, though, the memory won’t be about the ball—or the argument. It’ll be about meeting his hero, holding a signed bat, and celebrating his birthday in a way he’ll never forget.
Featured image credit: X (screenshot)
