Don’t go calling off the hunt just yet, keyboard warriors, you have the wrong person.
A baseball fan wrongfully identified as the ‘Phillies Karen’ is doing her best to set the record straight – and even made a little joke about the attention she has received since the viral incident on Friday night.
“Ok everyone,” Cheryl Richardson-Wagner posted on Facebook. “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!”
Richardson-Wagner wasn’t the only one setting the record straight.
The Hammonton School District in New Jersey also was forced to comment on the situation after several claims were made that the woman in question worked there.
“The woman identified on social media as ‘Phillies Karen’ is not, and has never been an employee of the Hammonton Public Schools located in Hammonton, New Jersey,” the district posted on Facebook.
“Anyone who works for our school district, attended as a student or lives in our community would obviously have caught the ball bare-handed in the first place, avoiding this entire situation!”
Social media sleuths have been trying to identify a woman who snatched a baseball away from a kid at a game between the Phillies and Marlins in Miami on Friday night.
The scene unfolded in the fourth inning after Philadelphia’s Harrison Bader launched a home run to left field, where several Phillies fans were sitting.
The ball landed in a row of empty seats when Drew Feltwell hustled over to collect it off the ground.
However, the woman believed that the ball was hers, leading to heated confrontation with Fellwell, who already had returned to his seat and give the ball to his son, Lincoln, as an early birthday gift.
The woman appeared to berate the father as his son looked on in shock before Feltwell relented and gave the ball to her – as loud boos were heard from other fans in the area.
Feltwell told NBC10 Philadelphia in an interview on Saturday that he was shocked when the woman approached him.
“I didn’t even see her walk up and as she reached for my arm, she just yelled in my ear, ‘That’s my ball!’ like super loud,” Feltwell said.
“I jumped out of my skin and I was like, you know, like ‘Why are you here?’ you know, ‘Go away.’ And she’s like, ‘That’s my ball! You stole out of – those are from our seats.’ And I said, ‘There was nobody in that seat,’ you know.”
Feltwell added that after being verbally attacked that he gave in to the woman because he “pretty much just wanted her to go away.”
“That was what we were there for,” Feltwell said. “We were there to get a home run ball. I thought I had accomplished this great thing and putting (it) in his glove meant a lot and she was just so adamant and loud and yelling and persistent and I just didn’t want to deal with it anymore.”
While the situation seemed a bit dicey at first, it worked out pretty well for them in the end.
A couple of innings later, a member of the Marlins stadium staff delivered a bag full of gifts from the team to great applause from fans in the area.
He also got to meet Bader after the game with the outfielder and was gifted an autographed bat.
As for ‘Phillies Karen,’ the search remains ongoing with several other camera angles of the incident being posted on social media.