OT: She Got the BALL ! Sometimes sportsmanship has to be FORCED

[cbelt3]

CNN has the story

" Jennifer Valdivia scooped up the baseball after it sailed into the right-field stands. The 12-year-old smiled and giggled over the keepsake from her first Major League ballgame

She'd have to sue to get the ball back."

Boo on the Phillies for bullying a 12 year old girl. Boo !

[M A V I C]

Wow, that's sad. This will just be one more example for people who think baseball should lose all its exemptions and have to be treated like every other business out there. If they're going to treat their fans as if it's not about "America's past time" then their exemptions should be a past time as well.

[btfc]

Very lame of the Phillies organization on many levels. What a P.R. disaster!

[M A V I C]

Think about this more, they should file theft charges.

[RAMd®d]

A Phillies employee, Jennifer says, told her if she handed over the ball, she could come back after the game, meet the slugger and get him to autograph it. She gave the ball up. In exchange, she got cotton candy and a soda.

Jennifer went back to her seat but returned to the clubhouse after the game -- this time, with her grandfather and the rest of her party. They waited. The Phillies slugger never showed up.

A security guard walked up and gave Jennifer a ball autographed by Howard. But it wasn't the one she caught.

This ball was clean and polished. Jennifer calls it "the fake one."

"I was, like, really sad."


It's too bad her mom couldn't be at the game to run interference.

Yeah, it was a special occasion for the player, but the ball club didn't have to be so cheap, and they certainly could have shown a lot more respect to the girl.


When Salvatore Durante snagged Roger Maris' 61st home-run ball -- the one that broke Babe Ruth's single season home-run record in 1961 -- his life changed forever.

Durante offered to give it to Maris, but the Yankees slugger declined. "He said: 'Keep the baseball and try to make some money with it,'" Durante once told the Baltimore Sun. He sold it for $5,000 -- what amounted to a year-and-a-half's salary for Durante.

Now that's a class act, of all concerned.

I would not expect the girl to consider giving it back, though. If it was that important to Howard, he and the club could have showed her far more respect.

An accomplishment for Howard, but without fans, how important is it.