Father of child whose ball was 'stolen' by woman at baseball game speaks out following backlash over controversial decision
A father-son duo who sparked sympathy over the weekend after being berated by a grown female baseball fan on live television have spoken out, issuing an emotional statement.
For those out of the loop with the sports game scandal, the incident occurred midway through the Philadelphia Phillies' thrashing of the Miami Marlins 9-3 on Saturday (7 Sept).
One of the highlights of the match saw centre-fielder Harrison Bader score a jaw-dropping home run, sending the ball deep into the crowds.
In footage which has since gone viral around the world, the ball heads towards a collection of empty seats, until a father runs across the bleachers to catch it for his son. The proud dad immediately rushes back to his child, who holds his prized home run ball proudly in his glove, before the two of them embrace.
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Seconds later, however, and their sweet moment is soured by a woman who was sitting several seats behind the horde of empty rows, and who claimed the ball was heading straight for her instead.
Another video filmed by a fellow Phillies fan shows the woman shouting in the blindsided father's face, 'You took it from me. It was in my hand', while his horrified wife, son and daughter look on.
Choosing not to fight back, the man - who has since been named as Drew Fretwell, whose son is named Lincoln - hands the ball back to the woman, who herself storms off before being booed out of the stands.
As we say, father-of-two Drew has since addressed the bombshell incident, telling NBC10 Philadelphia on Saturday why he refused to stoop to the woman's level.
He told the news outlet: "I pretty much just wanted her to go away."
Recalling his catch of the ball, the doting dad continued: "She was in the seat behind. I don’t know if she was standing up. Maybe?
"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 in and coincidentally, as soon as I was going in, it stopped in one spot and I just picked it up."
Of the moment, Drew went on to claim he had no idea that the woman had followed him back to his seat.
"I didn’t even see her walk up and as she reached for my arm," he confessed. "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."
Drew added: "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 glove and she just wouldn’t stop.
"And I mean, I’m literally leaning back as she’s in my face yelling and yelling and I pretty much just wanted her to go away because I had a fork in the road.
"Either do something I was probably going to regret or be dad and show him how to deescalate the situation so that’s where I went."
Despite coming out of the incident in a much more favourable position, the father admitted: "I wasn’t very happy that we had to give it to her, but we can’t win."
Drew added: "That was what we were there for. We were there to get a home run ball.
"I thought I had accomplished this great thing and putting [it] in his glove meant a lot and she was just so adamant and loud and yelling and persistent and I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore."
Thankfully, Drew and Lincoln's story ends happily with both the Phillies and the Marlins jointly gifting the youngster - whose birthday it was - a prize pack, which contained a variety of gifts.
The child also met with home run scorer Bader, who signed his bat.
Rhianna Benson