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The debate over the “Phillies Karen” incident has been wild, from the people mocking the baseball fan who yelled at a man who grabbed a home-run ball and gave it to his son, to people arguing over whether the father did right by his son by giving the angry woman the ball.
At the center of the maelstrom is the question of character.
Character is famously defined as what you do when no one is looking. Social media says character is what you do when everyone is looking.
It’s a precarious change since we are all one kiss-cam away from having our worst decisions broadcast to the world and archived for posterity, like dirty laundry hanging on a very public clothesline.
And yes, if you don’t want your bad behavior to go viral, don’t behave badly is a reasonable rejoinder.
But as Drew Feltwell, the dad who retrieved the baseball, told USA Today, ”I could say something like she got what she deserved, but I don’t know if she deserved that much.’’
If you missed the story, the incident happened during the Sept. 5 game between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Miami Marlins.
In the fourth inning, Harrison Bader hit a home run that sailed into the stands, resulting in a scuffle over the ball between a handful of adults.
Feltwell, a West Palm Beach resident who attended the game with his wife and two children, later said his family was there to celebrate his son’s 10th birthday, and that he felt like a “super dad” when he claimed the ball and gave it to his son.
But when the woman came over and yelled at him, saying it was her ball, Feltwell took the ball from his son and gave it to her. He later said he wanted to show his children how to deescalate a volatile situation.
Despite the frenzied search of internet sleuths, the woman dubbed Cruella de Phil on social media — (“Hide the Dalmatians!” someone wrote on Instagram) — has not been identified as of this writing. There’s little pity for her, even though the ball did land in her vicinity and some have accused Feltwell of taking it out of her hand. It’s only a matter of time, though, before someone exposes her. There’s too much video, from multiple angles.
And then, as Amy Cooper will attest, life as she knows it will fall apart spectacularly.
Cooper, better known as “Central Park Karen” after her viral encounter with birdwatcher Christian Cooper in May 2020, said she was still in hiding three years later as the man she falsely accused became famous.
“There is no such thing as a ‘Karen.’ We are all just people. Each of us deserving grace and forgiveness,” Amy Cooper wrote for Newsweek two years ago.
And yet the “Karens” continue to pile up on the internet, thanks in part to the proliferation of police body-cam videos that have made Karen-shaming an ethically dubious pastime.
We have no idea whether “Phillies Karen” is full of remorse for a regrettable outburst that went viral, or still angry at Feltwell for grabbing the ball in the scrum. Possibly she feels a bit like Amy Cooper did when she wrote in 2023, “I don’t know if I did everything right in that park, but I know I didn’t do everything wrong.”
There is pressure for her to come forward and give the ball to the boy, with one company even offering her $5,000 if she will write “I’m sorry” on it. Unfortunately, that window of opportunity may have a shelf life — the longer she stays silent, the more unforgiving the public.
At least, there was plenty that was positive to take away from this story — the gifts showered on Feltwell’s son, for one thing, and most importantly, the rare moment of national unity in which we all affirmed that, at least when it comes to baseballs and kids, it’s them before us.
Disinviting Tom Hanks
Drew Feltwell took the high road at the Phillies game.
The same cannot be said of those who were cheering the news that Tom Hanks has been disinvited from an award ceremony at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point — among them, President Donald Trump.
As The Washington Post reported, “Hanks, 69, was to receive the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award, which recognizes an ‘outstanding citizen’ who did not attend West Point and has a distinguished record of service that exemplifies the academy’s ideals: ‘Duty, Honor, Country.’ A ceremony and parade were scheduled for Sept. 25.”
Previous recipients have included Barack Obama, Elizabeth Dole, George W. Bush, Gary Sinise, Condoleezza Rice and Ronald Reagan.
The West Point Association of Graduates announced Hanks’ selection in June, but said last week that the event was being canceled, with no mention of whether Hanks would still receive the award. Speculation is rampant that the change was due to Hanks’ politics — he was a visible supporter of Joe Biden, even hosting a televised special celebrating Biden’s inauguration.
Trump celebrated the news of the cancellation on social media, saying, “Our great West Point (getting greater all the time!) has smartly cancelled the Award Ceremony for actor Tom Hanks. Important move! We don’t need destructive, WOKE recipients getting our cherished American Awards!!!”
It’s unclear why Hanks, who is generally beloved, got labeled “woke” but cheering the cancellation is a bad look for those on the right, who previously were the ones getting disinvited. (Yale’s Buckley Institute even has an annual “Disinvitation Dinner" to honor people who have had invitations withdrawn over politics.)
Moreover, it’s the right that has, in recent years, been the most vocal supporters of free speech.
Hanks is, by his own description, “just a guy who makes movies and reads books,” but he has done much to portray the military in a positive light, and surely meets the criteria for the award, as the chairman of the West Point alumni group, Robert A. McDonald, said in the group’s announcement earlier this year:
“Tom Hanks has done more for the positive portrayal of the American service member, more for the caring of the American veteran, their caregivers and their family, and more for the American space program and all branches of government than many other Americans.”
(For the record: McDonald was the secretary of veterans affairs in the Obama administration, but he was also an April and Jay Graham Fellow at the George W. Bush Institute.)
Hanks famously said in the spring of 2016 that Trump would be president “when spaceships come down filled with dinosaurs in red capes.” Despite that and Hanks’ other comments critical of Trump, the president represents a party that has staked a flag on defending free speech. If his team was involved in the West Point decision (which is surmised, but not confirmed), they missed an opportunity here to champion it.
It would be a challenge of the highest order for the Buckley Institute to honor Hanks next — and equally a challenge for the actor to show up. But, to quote from a line by an actor most of America loves, “the hard is what makes it great.”
Recommended reading
Deseret reporter Brigham Tomco and photographer Kristin Murphy went to Turning Point USA’s headquarters in Arizona and emerged with an engrossing portrait of Charlie Kirk, who tragically died after being shot Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University.
“Kirk knows the spiritual and political are not always complementary,” Tomco wrote. “To stay grounded in the tumultuous world of grassroots engagement, Kirk tells his Gen Z and millennial acolytes to follow his example: Kirk got married in 2021, has had two children with his wife and puts family time first. ... Kirk also has made a phone-free Sabbath and scripture study core parts of his routine in an effort to pull back from the internet ‘warfare’ he lives, breathes and magnifies. ‘But politics is a blood sport, man,’ Kirk said.
How Charlie Kirk became too big to ignore
The warmth between Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox is something to behold, given that Moore is a Democrat and Cox a Republican. The two appeared together recently at the National Press Club. An excerpt from Deseret Editor Sarah Jane Weaver‘s coverage:
“For Washington to change, ‘we have to change our community,’ said Cox. ‘I think we make a mistake when we tell our kids that they need to go out and change the world. ... Most of them are not going to go out and change the world. That’s not how this works. But what I do say is, ‘Go out and change your neighborhood and your community.’”
Spencer Cox, Wes Moore say bipartisanship is tough sledding
“Treat Yo Self Tuesday” became a thing because of the TV show “Parks and Rec.” But Gen Z kept it up long after the show ended. Naomi Schaefer Riley notes that people used to find pleasure in connecting with our fellow human beings rather than, say, getting a pumpkin latte through a drive-thru alone in our car.
She writes: “Remote work turned out to be pretty miserable for a lot of young people. I was particularly sad for the recent college graduates who didn’t have the experience of meeting people in the office or at gatherings after work. What a slog to sit through the day in your pajamas and then just get into a new pair for the evening.”
Why so many people in the treat-yourself generation are still unfulfilled
End notes
A new online magazine called The Argument recently did polling on free speech that turned up something I found really interesting: Respondents who had voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 were significantly more likely (40%) than Donald Trump voters (11%) to say it’s OK to cut someone out of your life over politics.
“Nobody in America takes politics more personally than young liberals,” the man who conducted the survey later wrote. Find out why, and what can be done about it, here:
The politics of cutting someone out of your life
One thing that Lakshya Jain told me is that this trend of going “no contact” over political differences is not seen as often in other generations. I can attest. My best friend of 30-plus years almost always votes different from me, and yet we don’t argue about politics because we don’t talk about politics. We have too many other things in common and too much history together — none of which, thankfully, has gone viral.
As always, thank you for reading and being part of the Right to the Point community. You can email me at Jgraham@deseret.com, or send me a DM on X, where I’m @grahamtoday.