A father who was berated by a woman in a Philadelphia Phillies jersey into giving up a home run ball he had grabbed for his young son is speaking out about the incident as online sleuths continue to search in vain for the identity of “Phillies Karen.”
“I pretty much just wanted her to go away,” Drew Feltwell told NBC Philadelphia on Saturday, a day after his altercation with the woman went viral. “Still in disbelief that she walked down there like that.”
Feltwell, a Phillies fan from New Jersey who now lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., was attending Friday night’s game between the Phillies and Miami Marlins at LoanDepot Park in Miami with his wife and two children.
The Feltwell family was in the left field stands when Phillies center fielder Harrison Bader hit a home run that landed near them in the top of the fourth inning.
What happened next?
Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Harrison Bader celebrates with his teammates after hitting a home run against the Miami Marlins on Friday in Miami. (Sam Navarro/Imagn Images)
Several fans, including Feltwell, scrambled to find the ball. He grabbed it, turned, walked back to his family, gave his son Lincoln the ball and hugged him.
“I was already ecstatic, like I got Bader’s home run ball, and I get to put it in my son’s glove,” Feltwell recalled. “Then here she comes.”
Video posted to social media shows a woman approach Feltwell as he was embracing his son and angrily demand that he give her the ball.
“She just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ like, super loud,” Feltwell said. “I jumped out of my skin and I was like, you know, like ‘Why are you here?’ You know, ‘Go away.’”
After a brief tense exchange, Feltwell took the ball from his son’s mitt and gave it to her, and she walked away.
Feltwell said he decided to defuse the situation before it could escalate.
“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,” Feltwell said. “So that’s where I went.”
“I wasn’t very happy that we had to give it to her,” added Lincoln, who will soon turn 10. “But we can’t win.”
A representative for the Marlins gave Lincoln a goodie bag.
After the game, Bader met with the family and gave Lincoln a signed bat.
The altercation over the home run ball came just days after a similar scene unfolded at the U.S. Open. In that incident, a man was caught on video taking a hat from a tennis player who was trying to give it to a young fan.
The man later apologized, saying he believed the player had intended to give the cap to him for his sons, who had earlier asked for autographs.
“That mistaken belief made me reach out instinctively,” Piotr Szczerek wrote in a post on Facebook. “Today I know I did something that looked like deliberately taking a souvenir from a child. That was not my intention, but it does not change the fact that I hurt the boy and disappointed the fans.”
The search for ‘Phillies Karen’
The woman in the Phillies jersey who berated Feltwell was later booed. (Phillies Tailgate/X)
Meanwhile, the woman in the Phillies jersey was also seen on video confronting another man seated in the left field stands who had apparently heckled her for her behavior.
She was booed when she returned to her seat and promptly flipped off the entire section.
As the video of her initial confrontation with Feltwell spread across social media over the weekend, online sleuths searching for the real “Phillies Karen” apparently misidentified her.
“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),” Cheryl Richardson-Wagner posted on Facebook Saturday. “And I’m a Red Sox fan!”
Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader reacts after striking out in his next at-bat. (Marta Lavandier/AP)
A New Jersey school district also issued a statement saying that the woman in question does not work for the school system.
“The woman identified on social media as ‘Phillies Karen’ is not, and has never been an employee of the Hammonton Public Schools located in Hammonton, New Jersey,” the district said in a Facebook post. “Anyone who works for our school district, attended as a student or lives in our community would obviously have caught the ball bare-handed in the first place, avoiding this entire situation!”
Blowout Cards, an online baseball card retailer, is offering the woman $5,000 for the ball — but only if she signs it with an apology.
“We’ll offer $5,000 for that baseball right here, right now … but there is a catch,” the company said in a post on its website. “We want that ball signed and inscribed by her — and only her, whoever she is — ‘I’m sorry’ so we can simply give it back to the kid. Our offer is official and the offer is firm.”
The incident has gotten so much attention across social media that it was even parodied by the Savannah Bananas, the Georgia exhibition baseball team, who likened the woman to the Grinch in a skit at a game over the weekend.
In an interview with USA Today on Monday, Feltwell said that he has heard from many people who have vowed to get the ball back from the unidentified woman — but he doesn’t want them to.
“Please don’t do anything to that lady,’’ Feltwell said. “Leave it alone. You know, somebody knows her and can talk to her, that’s different. But God, I don’t want people breaking in their house and stuff like that. The internet already messed her up pretty good.’’