A father who handed over his son's home run baseball to an irate Philadelphia Phillies fan has explained his decision, saying the woman was 'so adamant and loud' that he wanted her to go away.
Drew Feltwell caught the ball hit by Phillies' Harrison Bader during Friday night's game against the Miami Marlins. He intended to give it to his son Lincoln as an early 10th birthday present. However, a woman approached him, shouting that the ball was hers, despite never having possession of it.
'I felt like super dad putting that ball in his glove and giving him a hug,' Feltwell told NBC10 Philadelphia. But the woman's persistence led him to hand over the ball. 'She was just so adamant and loud and yelling and persistent, and I just didn't want to deal with it anymore,' he said.
Feltwell said he wanted to de-escalate the situation in front of his son. His son Lincoln added, 'I wasn't very happy that we had to give it to her, but we can't win.'
After the incident, the woman was booed by other fans. A Marlins staff member later gave Lincoln a prize pack including a signed bat from Bader, who met with the boy after the game. 'We ended up having a good night because of good people,' Feltwell said.
Online rumours that the woman had been fired from her job at a New Jersey school district were denied by the Hammonton School District, which joked that any employee 'would obviously have caught the ball bare-handed in the first place.'
