At first glance, it looked bad. Really bad.
Shortly after Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig launched a ninth-inning home run in Sunday night’s bonkers World Series Game 5, a video surfaced of a Houston Astros fan holding the rare souvenir home run ball.
She didn’t have it for long, though: A man to her right ripped the ball out of the woman’s hands and, to the horror of the woman and another guy who frantically tried to stop him, tossed the ball back onto the field at Minute Maid Park.
What the heck was this guy thinking? Did he realize how much a home run ball from an instant classic World Series game might be worth someday? How did this woman not freak out?
Well, turns out there’s a backstory, and it’s bizarrely hilarious. The man who stole the ball, Kirk Head, is the brother-in-law of Sarah Head, the woman he pilfered. And Sarah claims she only was mad because she didn’t get to throw the ball back, continuing a ballpark tradition of tossing back home run balls hit by opponents.
“I would have liked the opportunity to throw it back myself,” Sarah told Yahoo Sports after the game.
That leads us to by far the best part of this story: Kirk’s account of the incident. From Yahoo Sports:
“Kirk was informed by Yahoo Sports that he’d been turned into a villain on the Internet and then asked to defend himself.
“His defense? ‘(Expletive) the Dodgers.'”
We really want to be angry with you, Kirk, but that’s a pretty sound defense.
The Heads probably could have sold Puig’s home run ball for a pretty penny or kept it as an invaluable memento, but for our sake, this is a much better story. Houston also went on to win 13-12, apparently mending any broken fences.
“We hugged and made up afterward,” Kirk added.
