What started as a father-son bonding moment at a baseball game quickly spiraled into one of 2025’s most viral controversies.
During Friday night’s game, Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader launched a home run into the left-field seats at LoanDepot Park in Miami. Phillies fan Drew Feltwell scrambled to grab the souvenir homerun ball and handed it to his 9-year-old son, Lincoln. The father-son embrace was short-lived, though, as a woman in a Phillies jersey stormed over and demanded the ball, all while on live national television.
“She just screamed in my ear, ‘That’s my ball,’ super loud,” Feltwell told NBC Philadelphia. “I pretty much just wanted her to go away.”
Feltwell ultimately gave in, taking the ball from his son’s glove and handing it to the woman in an effort to de-escalate the moment. “I had a fork in the road: either do something I was probably going to regret or be dad and show him how to de-escalate the situation,” the father explained.
Video of the exchange exploded across social media, with the woman quickly dubbed “Phillies Karen.”
Within hours, amateur internet sleuths launched a search for her identity, and apparently got it wrong.
One New Jersey woman, Cheryl Richardson-Wagner, found herself wrongly accused online, telling the online mob that they dropped the ball. She pushed back with humor, posting a Facebook note that reads: “I’m not the crazy Philly Mom (but I sure would love to be as thin as she is and move as fast) … And I’m a Red Sox fan.”
Even a New Jersey school district had to intervene after rumors claimed the woman worked for them. “The woman identified on social media as ‘Phillies Karen’ is not, and has never been an employee of the Hammonton Public Schools,” the district said in a statement.
The internet’s obsession has left Feltwell and his family uneasy. While many fans cheered his composure at the ballgame, he now worries the mob mentality could escalate to something more sinister than sports.
“Please don’t do anything to that lady,” Feltwell said in an interview with USA Today. “Leave it alone. You know, somebody knows her and can talk to her, that’s different. But God, I don’t want people breaking in their house and stuff like that. The internet already messed her up pretty good.”
Lincoln admitted he wasn’t happy about giving up the ball – though the Marlins later gave him a goodie bag, and Bader signed a bat for him and his son after the game, as seen in photos posted by the Phillies after seeing the viral interaction.
Yet, as the online drama dragged on, others tried to cash in on the spectacle.
A baseball card retailer, Blowout Cards, offered $5,000 for the viral homerun ball, but only if the woman autographs it with an apology and hands it back over to the kid. The Savannah Bananas, a viral exhibition baseball team, even mocked the incident with one of their infamous skits, portraying “Phillies Karen” as the Christmas Grinch.