The dad at the center of the Phillies Karen clip has broken his silence. Now he explains why he gave up his son’s home run ball after a heated confrontation in Miami.
Drew Feltwell says he sprinted for Harrison Bader’s homer at LoanDepot Park. Then he dropped it into his son Lincoln’s glove as an early birthday gift.
Moments later, an older Phillies fan confronted him in the left-field seats and demanded the ball.
“She just yelled in my ear, ‘That’s my ball!’ super loud,” Feltwell said. “I jumped out of my skin … I pretty much just wanted her to go away.”
Feltwell says the escalation forced a choice in front of his kids. “Either do something I was going to regret or be Dad and show him how to handle it. So that’s where I went.”
Afterwards, the Marlins stepped in with memorabilia for the kids. They also arranged a meet and greet with Bader, who handed Lincoln a signed bat.
“I thought I had accomplished this great thing,” Feltwell said. “But she just wouldn’t stop.”
Feltwell also laid out how he got to the ball first as several fans charged the section. He says he watched it carom into an empty seat and reached in from the row.
“I don’t know if she was standing up. Maybe?” he said.
“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 i,n and coincidentally, as soon as I was going in, it stopped in one spot and I just picked it up.”
“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.”
“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 glov,e and she just wouldn’t stop.”
He ultimately handed over the ball, then apologised to Lincoln. After the game, the signed bat softened the blow.
“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,” Drew said.
Meanwhile, the clip spread quickly online as fans debated ballpark etiquette and what parents should do in that moment.
Phillies Karen has yet to speak out.
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