“WAAA! I wanted that ball! By the way, where am I?”

I skipped this ten-minute controversy from last month, but I think it was worth mentioning from several ethics angles, so consider this catch-up.

Rangers fans Sean Leonard and Shannon Moore were at a Texas Rangers-Yankee game a few weeks ago when a  game ball was tossed into the stands by Texas’s Mitch Moreland. They caught it and gleefully posed for the TV cameras, which also caught a three-year old boy crying hysterically next to them. Immediately, the couple was vilified far and wide, on TV, in blogs and on radio talk shows ( Business Insider called them “The Monsters Who Made A Little Boy Cry”)  for taking the ball and not giving it to the child. The main accuser  who sparked all this hatred was Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, who told his radio audience that the couple was taunting the unhappy boy.

Outrageous, all right, but Kay, not the couple. Kay’s description of what occurred was speculative and even fanciful, and for other commentators to commence vilifying the two fans without knowing anything about them, or even why the child was crying, was frighteningly unfair, irresponsible and cruel. Yes, you too can be caught on camera and turned into a national punching bag! Later, we discovered that…. Continue reading →