Phillies Karen: Woman who demanded home run baseball from child flipped middle finger to crowd

Matt Shrivell
The Nightly
‘Phillies Karen’ has gone viral for all the wrong reasons
‘Phillies Karen’ has gone viral for all the wrong reasons Credit: Facebook.

A female baseball fan has gone viral for all the wrong reasons after harassing a father to hand over a home run baseball that he had grabbed and presented to his son at a major league baseball game.

The woman who has been christened, ‘Phillies Karen’, after she was spotted wearing a Philadelphia Phillies shirt in the crowd, ran after the man who had snared the ball after it landed near the pair before demanding he hand it over.

In baseball, any ball that makes it over the fence is fair game for fans on a ‘first in, best dressed’ honour system, and the father quickly laid claim to the ball before placing it in his sons baseball glove and hugging him to celebrate.

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Phillies slugger Harrison Bader had hit the home ball run into the stands at Miami Marlins’ LoanDepot Park and the Phillies fans in the stand were in raptures.

Joy soon turned to disgust as the woman remonstrated with the father, before grabbing him on the arm and demanding the child hand over the ball.

The man seemed shocked that the woman was laying claim to the ball, and momentarily argued the point, before deescalating the situation and handing the ball over in a bid to move her away from his family.

The entire moment was captured on national television and the crowd in the stand was having none of it.

Boos and jeers rang out as pressure mounted on the woman to return the ball to the young fan.

Unrelenting in her resolve the woman returned serve to the crowd and gave them all the middle finger before returning to her seat.

The Sun is reporting some of the conversation between the man and woman at the height of the fracas.

“That was mine,” she yelled. “You took it from me.”

“It was in my hands.”

Both Major League Baseball teams were clearly watching the incident on the big screens, before a Miami Marlins staff member appeared in the stands with a bag of merchandise for the young fan.

Post-match, Bader then presented the fan with a signed bat as the youngster’s family watched on.

“Class act by Harrison Bader, turning a tough moment into an unforgettable memory for that young Phillies fan with a signed bat!” one fan wrote on social media.

Memes and video clips of ‘Phillies Karen’ are going viral online, with one showing a likeness of the woman demanding the US Powerball owners give her first prize because she “had her ticket first”.

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