There are moments in baseball that are priceless. On April 14, 2013, at the Oakland Athletics stadium, a father made his young son’s dream come true: catching a foul ball. He held it proudly for exactly half a second.
Then, with the naturalness of someone returning something that doesn’t belong to him, the boy threw it back onto the field from the upper deck. Without hesitating. Without looking at his father. Without understanding absolutely anything about baseball’s sacred protocol. The A’s were losing 9-1 to the Tigers in the eighth inning, so maybe the little guy simply agreed that nothing was worth it that afternoon.
Fox Sports Detroit commentators Mario and Rod Allen burst into laughter live on air. The clip went viral within hours on Deadspin, BuzzFeed, and dozens of other outlets. The punchline few saw: the local Oakland broadcast camera cut away just as the boy started crying from embarrassment. In the end, the only one who had a worse time than the A’s that day was him.
