Somehow, the drama over the Philadelphia Phillies home run ball is still not over.
A trading card company is begging the woman, dubbed ‘Karen’, who harassed a father into giving up the ball to sell it to them for $5,000 – with only one condition.
“Attention Karen: We will you pay $5,000 for the ball we only ask that you autograph it ‘I’m sorry.’ Please share we would really like to get this ball to that young fan,” the company wrote in a post on X.
“Our offer is is official and the offer is firm,” the company added on their website.
It is latest chapter in the viral story of the world’s most famous baseball.
It all started during the Phillies’ matchup against the Marlins last Friday, when Harrison Bader’s homer was scooped up by Drew Feltman. He hoped to give the ball to his son, Lincoln, as an early 10th birthday gift, but ended up surrendering it to an irate woman who insisted she was the one to catch it.
“I felt like Superdad putting that ball in his glove and giving him a hug,” Feltwell, told NBC 10. “Still in disbelief that she walked down there like that.”
Seconds after retrieving the ball, an unknown woman approached him and began shouting “that’s my ball!”
The father ultimately gave the woman the ball to deescalate the situation.
“She was, very, very, very close, and I’m dad of the family so I didn’t want to do something I regret. That was the choice I made. I handed the ball back and told her to go away,” he added.
The footage was captured by the TV cameras in the stadium and went viral immediately, with most painting the woman as the villain.
After the game, the Marlins gifted the boy a goodie bag, while Bader met the young fan and gave him a signed baseball bat to hopefully take the sting out of losing his homer ball.
Since then, overly online sleuths have been trying to identify the woman. Rumors circulated that she had been fired by a New Jersey school district as a result of her actions, but the district denied those claims, insisting that if it was one of their teachers, she would have caught the ball barehanded.
“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,” the district said in a statement, according to Breaking Atlantic County.
The father admitted during a recent interview that he’d have like to have the ball for his son, but he’s happy with how things worked out.
“I wish I had the ball for my son to put in his room next to the bat, but if I had the ball, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the bat, so it worked out fine,” Feltwell said.
Now, the card company is trying to do their part to reunite the young Phillies fan with ball, saying “the one thing we absolutely do know, without question, is who absolutely needs that baseball in his new Harrison Bader collection.”
