No, indeed.
The incident that has “gone viral” from the stands at a Phillies-Marlins game in Miami is covered in the videos above. Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader hit a home run into the left field seats. The ball hit the bleachers and rolled around as four fans tried to nab the souvenir. A man appeared to win the battle, returned to his seat and gave the ball to his young his son, who rewarded him with a hug.
Enter Cruella DeVille. A woman who had been scrambling for the ball, wearing Phillies gear, confronted the man and demanded the ball, claiming she had a hold of it before he got it. The father complied, taking the ball out of his son’s glove and handing it to the woman. Of course the incident was filmed and posted on social media, with the unidentified woman being quickly dubbed “Phillies Karen.”
Sensing a public relations opportunity, the staff at the Marlins’ LoanDepot Park (another horribly named baseball park: money isn’t everything, guys!) wanted to make things right, so they sent a stadium employee to give the son and his sister a goody bag full of baseball stuff.
Awwwww…
The villain in this incident was not the horrible woman. (She doesn’t know her baseball ball-chasing rules, incidentally. In those scrambles for bouncing balls, whoever gets a firm grip on the ball first wins fair and square. I have been in many of these tussles, one of which featured a little old lady snatching the ball from me —a Mickey Mantle foul!—just as I thought I had it in my grasp….) No, the villain was the weenie father.
What a disgrace. This guy gave up in the face of an unjust and unreasonable confrontation because he didn’t have the guts to tell the woman to buzz off, de-gifting his son of a prize—it was his birthday!—in the process. In that moment, he taught to boy many things, none of them good. Don’t fight for what’s yours. Let bullies win. Avoid unpleasant confrontations at all costs, even when it means letting unethical tactics prevail.
He also taught his son that his father is a weenie. Good to know, I guess.
Ethics Alarms 
I disagree on three strikes, er… counts. 1) The woman was in the process of tainting the ball, unfortunately, smearing her indelible mental stench on it. Father might not have wanted it to stink up the boy’s room. 2) The boy possessed the ball for a while. The larger point was made: his father took him to a game, spent time with him, and, secondarily, got him a ball. That point shouldn’t be lost on the son. 3) If it hasn’t, then perhaps, years from now, when he’s driving down the highway, and someone’s moving to cut him off, rather than speed up to vie for 10 feet of road, and possibly get into a wreck, he might just let the other driver have the 10 feet and shrug it off. In sum, perhaps the father did exactly what he was supposed to in his mind, and perhaps he’s right.
Recalling “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”: “What an eccentric comment!”
Perhaps think of it this way (i.e., translation): you fight for things that don’t matter, you lose things that do.
Everything matters.
Translation: Fight for things that don’t matter, lose things that do. I realize that as a blogger on ethics alarms you have to be on the lookout for ethics violations; but I don’t think you found one here, at least not in the father’s behavior. If everyone acted like you think the father should have acted, I’m not sure the world at large would be any more ethical. Probably would be less so. That could be something to consider.
Yes… No need to fight, but I would have turned it into a litigious first amendment lesson. Letting my children behold the “too much” liberty we must have, so that I could simply reply, thank you and have a nice day.
And. That lady needs to get a cat.
Principle matters. Letting assholes and bullies win because they are insisting on things they have no right to but aren’t big deals to you is how such awful people get empowered. There are silly controversies I won’t bother with but this? No way. I would tell the woman to get out of my face, and that if she wanted to sue me, here’s my address. You have described how weenyism spreads and poisons the culture.
Both sides of a disagreement (or war) can almost always name principles they are fighting for. In this case, the father had multiple principles at stake, and weighed them, apparently judiciously. That is very different from abandoning principles for the sake of convenience, in which case I would agree with you.
He caved to a woman trying to hector him into taking away a gift he had just made to his son. He did this because, in the end, avoiding an argument was more important to him than standing up for his own child and to her. That the Marlins decided to exploit his disgrace for PR purposes and make the kid a focus of their “kindness’ is moral luck and nothing else.
We can assume that this guy will also back down when someone demands his parking space because she “saw if first” and grovel apologies and remove his “Trump for President’ sign after a neighbor accuses him of promoting racism, after all, there are more important things. The boss promotes his girl friend over him, but he doesn’t quit or even protest: what’s the point? Hey, back of the bus, front of the bus, they both get to my destination at the same time! Live and let live!
Baloney.
“… whoever gets a firm grip on the ball first wins fair and square.”
Well, golly. Now we need a definition of ‘firm grip’. Is it possible that the woman had a grasp on the ball but, in the continuum of loose to firm, her grasp tended toward loose, not firm enough to keep it when someone with a firmer grip took it? Does that make her grasp infirm?
And, ‘first’? Do we really know who had a grip on the ball first? Was it a tie? Did she have it for, oh, let’s say 1/8 second, before a stronger hand came in and took possession? Was there just a tiny part of a second in between each hand grasping, so small an interval that each of the hand owners honestly believed they were first?
Is there a chance that the dad realized that he might have gained possession only because he had the stronger grip?
In any case, the woman was unethical in creating a confrontation over a baseball that was in the glove of a very happy kid. The man defused the situation, yet he is the villain and not the woman who is called ‘horrible’ and is referred to as Cruella De Ville?
I don’t know that I buy the common narrative on this incident. From the video, the view is blocked by a few of the 4 or 5 people at the spot where the ball landed, and it’s not apparent whether the woman had control of the ball or not, or whether the man (who ran over from about a dozen seats away…kind of a jerk move in any case, IMO) did indeed snatch it out of her hand. She seemed to think so, and if true, that could account for the father, knowing his own guilt, giving up the ball so quickly.
Giving the ball to a kid sort of lays on a “think of the children” narrative, and of course there’s always more audience for an “adult bullies an innocent child” story, maybe especially in the random sports memorabilia category.
That the woman had a stereotypical “Karen” look about her, including an “I’m With Her” logo shirt didn’t help. Maybe her best move would have just been to let it go once the ball had been handed off to the kid.
I think the father was right to hand it over. It’s not fair that he had to, but it was the right decision. Imagine a video that began with him walking away and had a caption saying that he stole it from her. How many videos have we seen over the last few years where one person looks like the villain and then we find out the story is opposite of what it seemed? (Amy Cooper, Sarah Comrie, Nick Sandman)
We have the perspective of knowing the whole thing was caught on video. He did not know it was recorded. It’s just as likely someone would have posted what I described because you get more views if the person who ends up with the ball is the baddie. The internet would be dog piling on him and, if the truth came out, only a minority would know the real story.
Also, video or not, it’s not a good idea to argue with crazy.
in your last point, exactly.
she put her hands on him. She deserved a knuckle sandwich. That likely would have ruined his day. Restraint was necessary. But, as we already know she was going to be physical, he could not count on her to continue assaulting him. So, unless he was ready to clock her, give her the ball.
the lesson for the son is: it’s just a ball.
-Jut
Yep. Don’t teach your child to argue with crazy. Not over something like that.
The father has since said that he made the decision because he did not want to do something he’d regret in front of his kids.
“There was kind of a fork in the road, like, I’m gonna go one direction and then probably regret,” Feltwell said. “Or go this direction and do something in front of my kids that, you know, like a teaching moment.”
Sounds ethical to me.
The dad crossed like 30 seats to snatch the ball from the lady when it was literally at her feet as she was picking it up. Jerk move.
She chased him down to take it back. Jerk move.
I disagree that the dad’s move was a jerk move. There was nothing but empty seats between him and where the ball landed.
climbing over people? More of a dick move
by your logic, if a home run lands in an empty section, it is off limits.
-Jut
Jack – are you right on this one? Probably on the surface; but where it falls apart is what you don’t know. You don’t know this guy’s history and all of the possiblities that might exist. He doesn’t have knowledge of the cameras and the audience in support of his right to the ball and he’s with his child.
Maybe this guy knows himself, that he’s got a bad temper, that he lacks the proper tool kit to resolve this conflict. Maybe he’s taking a higher road to avert a terrible outcome that he won’t be able to control if this escalated further.
I agree, she had no right to the ball, and he didn’t enforce his rights; but there’s something ethical in de-escalation and brokering peace when there’s a lack of willing mediators to ensure a fair resolution. Is it a bit “weeny” – yes. Is that always bad? No. It was a bit of “exemplary ethics” or “golden rule ethics”.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand your point of view – but this is actually a scenario very rich for discussion.
Which is why I raised it and, true to form (well, most of the time), took a strong position while recognizing its and drawbacks. problems. The main one is that he may have known that he actually wrenched the ball from the woman’s hand unfairly, using his son as a rationalization. That would make her protest a “I know what you did, and so do you!” reaction, and one that he would have been ethical to change course and give back what was rightly hers.