Father and son speak out after viral Phillies-Marlins game confrontation
The father and son at the center of a viral Philadelphia Phillies baseball game confrontation are speaking out.
Andrew Feltwell and his family, including his son Lincoln, were at a Phillies game against the Miami Marlins on Friday when center fielder Harrison Bader hit a home run that went flying into the nearby stands.
Feltwell was caught on camera picking up the home run ball and then walking back over to his family to gift it to his young son, who was celebrating a birthday.
"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.
In the video, shortly afterward, a woman is seen storming over to the family and yelling at Feltwell.
"No, you took it from me!" the woman can be heard telling the father and son in viral footage of the exchange.
Feltwell said the moment left him shocked.
"When she screamed in my ear, that's when I, you know, everybody saw how shocked I was," Feltwell said. "And, you know, when I turned, I had to lean back, because she was really close. She had many, many inappropriate words to say around my kids. And all I could think was, 'Make her go away.'"
Feltwell said he ultimately gave the ball to the woman.
After the confrontation, both the Phillies and Marlins chipped in to give young Lincoln a happier memory.
The Marlins gifted the boy a bag full of goodies and Bader himself sent Lincoln home with a signed baseball bat.
"It was really, really exciting," Lincoln said. "I would've still liked that home run ball to put in my room, but everything else, it's all just as good in the end."
Experts at the sports news outlet The Athletic say when someone catches or gets a hold of a ball at a game, the unofficial rules are that once it's in a fan's hands, it's considered their ball, and it's always a nice gesture to give it to a nearby child if they want one.
"I think once the ball's in a kid's glove -- it's a baseball, like, there's no way that baseball was meaningful enough to an adult that they need to go take it out of the glove of a child," Levi Weaver, a staff writer at The Athletic, told ABC News. "It's just sort of the unwritten rule if you can pick up the ball."
