The young Phillies fan who was forced to relinquish the home run ball his father retrieved for him to an enraged woman is speaking out about the incident.
Lincoln Feltwell, 10, says he felt there was no way he could “win” when the red-faced and gray-haired woman came charging over to him and his father, after his dad had grabbed a home run ball that landed in a row of empty seats.
“Um, I wasn’t very happy that we had to give it to her, but we can’t win,” Lincoln told NBC10 Philadelphia.
“She was gonna get it anyway.”
The incident occurred after Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader hit a home run into the left field seats.
Several fans raced over to get the ball. However, Drew Feltwell, Lincoln’s father, beat the other fans to the ball that had dropped into an empty row of seats and went back to hand it to his grateful son.
After Lincoln’s dad gave him the ball, the woman, who has since been dubbed “Phillies Karen,” came charging over and demanded he return the ball. Lincoln’s father relented and gave her the ball.
It appears that since the ball landed in a row of empty seats in front of her, the woman felt the ball was hers.
Drew Feltwell admitted that he ultimately gave in to the enraged fan.
“She was in the seat behind,” he said, describing his pursuit of the ball.
“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 continued, “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.
“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.”
Feltwell said he relinquished the ball to “deescalate” the situation.
“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.
“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.”
The Phillies and the Marlins sprang into action to make sure Lincoln’s day at the ballpark wasn’t completely ruined.
Lincoln was presented with a gift bag from the Marlins.
And that wasn’t all. Lincoln even got to go to the Phillies locker room, where he received a signed bat from Harrison Bader.
The Phillies won the game, 9-3.
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