Over the years, I have seen too many instances of parents, grand parents and generally grown adults like like petulant children.
It is one of my biggest pet peeves because these idiots are ruining baseball for kids.
It happened again on Thursday, September 1, 2022 at a game between the Washington Nationals (home) vs. Oakland Athletics.
Joe Menses, playing right field for Nationals, threw a baseball to a crowd of kids and this man-child casually moves over to snag the ball and walks away.
Putting aside the debate as to whether the girl with a dark brown glove could have caught that ball or not (or even by the fact that she was towering over a boy with blue jersey), would it have killed for this dude to give the ball to one of the kids?
You know when a ball player throws a ball to a crowd of kids, he wants one of the kids to get it, not some bearded dude?
For some kids, these souvenirs encourages them to keep playing baseball (or softball) but to adults, it’s a freaking generic MLB baseball (that will most likely end up on someone’s garage sale for $1)!
Maybe this dude had a legitimate cause, like bringing the ball to a sick niece or something, but most fan stores at the stadium have these used baseball for 8 or 9 bucks.
Considering that he was wearing a Soto tagged jersey, don’t you think he could afford to spend the extra money if he truly needed it, rather than doing this?
** EDIT 2022.09.07 **
Someone named J.C twitted the following:
Replying to @RexChapmanand@JomboyMedia
I was at this game sitting a few seats away. The man that caught the ball gave it to a girl sitting in the area that was trying all evening. These kids actually got a ton of balls all game king, including the little boy. Too bad this video didn’t catch it all.
I do feel better that the ball ended up with a kid, but I think this was still not the right way to do it.