“We can’t win”: The kid who lost his home run ball to “Phillies Karen” has spoken

A home run at a recent Phillies game led to a heated confrontation, the formation of an internet mob seeking out “Phillies Karen,” and a case of mistaken identity—all over a baseball.

Who is Phillies Karen?

Last Friday, Harrison Bader hit a home run in the Philadelphia Phillies game against the Miami Marlins, sending the ball flying into the stands. Video captured the moment after a woman seemed to fumble the ball, leading to a man picking it up and bringing it back to his young son.

But the woman wasn’t willing to accept her loss, and was instead videoed marching over the family and demanding the ball be returned to her. It was an uncomfortable moment to watch—her and the dad arguing as the kid stands there, clearly upset about what’s going on.

“Something touched my arm, and then she just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ like, so loud,” the father, later identified as Drew Feltwell, told NBC News. “There was kind of a fork in the road, like, I’m gonna go one direction and then probably regret. Or go this direction and do something in front of my kids that, you know, like a teaching moment.”

He also said that he did not want the incident to “ruin” the woman’s life and that he did not wish “any harm on her”.

Eventually, Feltwell did hand the ball off to the woman now dubbed “Phillies Karen,” just so that she would leave them alone.

Everyone hates the Phillies Karen

That wasn’t the only argument the Phillies Karen got in during the game. People who were present and watched the incident go down were not thrilled with her behavior, which led to her getting booed and heckled by other fans in her section.

Rather than let it slide—or even realize that she was in the wrong—the woman was caught on camera getting in one heckler’s face, yelling at fans from a distance, and flipping everybody off.

And it didn’t end with the game itself. No, Phillies Karen has remained the subject of ridicule and disdain on the internet all weekend.

Mistaken identity

Having the fury of the internet aimed at her also meant that a lot of internet sleuths were itching to try to find Phillies Karen. And at one point, they claimed to have done so, offering up both a name and an alleged place of work for this woman.

But it would seem neither of those things were accurate. The woman whose name got dragged into things made a Facebook post saying she was not at the game—and is, in fact, a Red Sox fan.

After someone made a viral post saying Phillies Karen was fired, the workplace in question had to put out a statement saying that she couldn’t have been fired because the woman the internet mob was after didn’t actually work there and never had.

Despite these serious missteps, it would appear some people are still trying to find Phillies Karen—and throwing more names out as potential culprits in the process. If they’re going to keep doing that, hopefully, they get it right sooner rather than late,r before more people get unwittingly dragged into the whole mess.

A happy ending for some

The boy, Lincoln, ultimately still came out ahead after everything was said and done. An employee with the Marlins came over during the game to give him a goodie bag filled with gifts, and he was even given a meet and greet with Bader himself after the game.

“I wasn’t very happy that we had to give it to her, but we can’t win. She was going to get it anyways,” said the boy, according to NBC 10 Philadelphia.

“I’m happy I got to get something else. It was very, very fun getting to meet Bader.”

And the Phillies made sure to let everyone know that Bader signed a bat for Lincoln, too—hopefully leaving him with much better memories than the stunt pulled by Phillies Karen.