I Know What You Did Last Summer: Honors continue for D’Backs’ kid who returned ball at game

His name is Ian McMillan, and the Arizona Diamondbacks are turning his act of generosity into the feel-good hit of the summer. As we showed you on Thursday, Ian ended up with a baseball that was tossed into the stands by the Brewers’ Rickie Weeks at a game on Wednesday, but when an usher pointed out that the ball was intended for another, younger kid, Ian walked over and handed the boy the ball. This so impressed D’Backs announcers Daron Sutton and Mark Grace that they invited the 12-year-old to the booth and gave him an autographed bat.

But the honors haven’t stopped there. The team has decided to stretch this goodwill story as far as it will go, inviting Ian to throw out the first pitch at Friday’s game, meet manager Kirk Gibson (who gave him a Diamondbacks jersey with his name on it) and take batting practice with team. Ian was also named Person Of The Week on ABC’s World News.

Video here.

Ian was surprised a lot of people were watching.

“Once they first saw me on television, I have gotten about 70 text messages… in the first 30 minutes,” he said.

One man who was watching was his dad, who is extremely proud.

“Both the boys, Ian and Greg, are good kids and we were pretty proud when we saw what he did,” John McMillan said.

So far this is still a feel-good story, but if the D’Backs give him one more thing I’m calling exploitation. How bankrupt have we become as a society when someone who does a simple decent thing is honored this much? Wait, don’t answer that.

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D-backs reward upstanding young fan [ABC15]