Phillies foul ball dad: 'That ball was going to hit my son in the head'

You might remember the incident last week when Jayson Werth was galloping after a foul ball in the first row in the stands only to be obstructed by a father and son combo who blocked his glove and made the ball a souvenir instead of an out. Werth, understandably mad as the incident happened in the 12th inning of a tie game, unleashed a couple of choice expletives that left the father embarrassed and the son with a few words to look up on Google. The fallout has been very mixed, with the public siding slightly with the father.
Here’s what Pat, the father who caught the foul ball, said in a radio interview on 97.5 the Fanatic:

“As soon as I seen it off the bat, to be honest with you, it wasn’t even about catching a foul ball. It was about protecting my son. If you really look at the footage again, I took a step over to my son and I catch the ball. If I don’t catch it, it’s going to hit my son in the head. I wasn’t even thinking about Werth. The only thing that I thought about was getting that ball and making sure it didn’t hit him. Then I went numb afterwards because I heard Werth, he screamed. I was like, ‘What just happened there?’ I sat down thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me. Unless I knew that 100 percent he was going to catch it. Even if there was a two percent chance that that ball was going to hit my son in the head, I’m going to catch it. Those are my seats. If you look away and look back, you are going to lose that ball in the lights, so I just looked at the ball the whole time.”

Audio here.

Personally I believe that once a ball reaches the stands it’s fan property, and if a player can fish one out of the people quagmire, good on ye. Werth basically flipped out on somebody for trying to defend himself from a baseball heading straight for his (and his son’s) head at 90 miles per hour, and that’s not cool.
How’s the son doing, you ask? Not too great from the looks of things. This incident is most definitely going to stay with him for his adult life, unless he develops Alzheimer’s, and the only silver lining is he got a foul ball out of the ordeal. His dad’s reviled by many Werth flipped out on him.

“He’s been pretty quiet about it,” Pat said of his son. “I try to talk to him about it, so he’s really not saying too much. He’s a huge Phillies fan and Werth is one of the guys he really likes. He just doesn’t know what to think about it. I see that he’s disappointed. I don’t really know if he is disappointed in me catching it or what.”

Werth was somewhat apologetic the following day.

“Obviously, I feel bad for the guy and the kid that were sitting there and the people around there,” Werth said. “It was kind of out of character a little bit. But I don’t feel bad about playing hard and going after balls in stands and stuff like that.”

If my dad ever caught a screaming foul ball with his bare hands I’d be very proud of him, because that’s a feat to crow about. I’m amazed every game when I see a fan reach out and snare a ball gloveless. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline that’s masking the pain or if it’s easier than it looks, but I know for sure that if a ball ever came close to me I’m screaming like a five-year-old and ducking under the nearest person I can find, be it my father or a little grandmother. As a former third-grader with extremely slow reflexes, I can confirm that those balls can HURT.
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Werth ‘feels bad’ for foul ball flap [Yahoo Sports]
To catch or not to catch [Sports Radio Interviews]