'Screamed in my ears, touched...': Heartbroken dad speaks out after Phillies fan snatched home run ball from his son

The father who chased down a home run ball for his son during a Philadelphia Phillies game has finally broken the silence. Drew Feltwell was at a Phillies-Marlins game in Miami with his children on Friday when Phillies center fielder Harrison Bader hit a home run. Drew and his young son Lincoln attended the match on September 5 when a home run, hit by Harrison Bader, came their way at the LoanDepot Park.

While several fans tried to grab the ball, but Drew FeltWell was able to grab it and he walked over to give it to son, dropping it in his glove and giving him a big hug. But what happened next shook him. He was met with fierce opposition from another baseball fan, a woman, who grabbed his arm and appeared to berate him, as seen in video footage that has since gone viral.

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Drew Feltwell speaks on ball snatching scandal

Drew Feltwell said that after he handed the ball to his son, Lincoln, someone touched his arm, screamed in his ear and demanded the ball.


“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 in an interview. He added, “You know, and then, then here she comes. Something touched my arm, and then she just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ like, so loud.”

“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 further expressed.

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"I heard the crack of the bat, watched the ball go up in the air and I knew it was going to the right but I didn't know where. So I just started going to the right a little bit, hit a chair, and bobbled between the armrests, and I picked it up, turned around, and felt like super-dad," Feltwell told ABC News. "[I] walked back to Lincoln, put it in his glove and gave him a hug."

"It was exciting getting one -- our first home run ball ever from all our games," Lincoln recalled.

Explaining that he is “still in disbelief that she walked down there like that," Drew told NBC 10 Philadelphia he is instead more focused on "just trying to set an example of how to de-escalate a situation in front of my son."

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Phillies Karen row

In the viral video shared online from the altercation, the upset Phillies fan could be heard telling Drew, “That was ours!” “You took it from me," the woman then told the father, adding, “You took it from me! That was in my hands.”

After a few seconds of arguing, Drew could be seen giving in to the upset fan, reaching into his son's glove for the baseball and giving it to the woman.

“Fine,” he said, according to a fan-captured clip, prompting the woman to respond back with the same. Phillies TV announcer Ruben Amaro was incredulous that the woman insist the ball belonged to her, rhetorically asking “What is her problem?”

On the Marlins broadcast, the announcers remarked about how 'weird' the situation was and said that someone from Miami should deliver another ball to the boy.

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The internet went crazy after the video of the incident made the rounds, with folks trying to establish the identity of the woman who it could be. The internet hit out at the woman for her unruly behaviour and dubbed her as "Phillie Karen". A Moorestown, Burlington County, NJ woman was named and she felt the wrath.

"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," the woman wrote on her Facebook account Saturday.

The Hammonton School District, also in South Jersey, put out a statement distancing the district and their employees from the controversy, after online reports said the woman was an administrator there and had been fired.

"'Phillies Karen' is not, and has never been an employee of the Hammonton Public Schools," the district wrote. They also set the record straight on another thing — they would have caught the ball — a point of pride with any real Phillies fan.

"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."