What to Know
As a baseball fan, one of my dreams has always been to catch a home run ball. Many baseball fans have the same dream, and sometimes the baseball gods smile upon them and grant them their wish. And then someone will come in and squash their dreams. It’s especially sad when it’s a kid who gets the ball snatched away by a mean grown up. A video has gone viral where a man steals a baseball from a young girl at a recent Cleveland vs. Tampa Bay game. People have been beyond mean to the man on social media, leading to him having to make a public statement.
The Tampa news did coverage of the incident.
After a grown man wrestles a HR ball away from a little girl, @Ry_Bass is there to make the situation right.
— Evan Closky (@ECloskyWTSP) April 27, 2026
🫡 to my guy. pic.twitter.com/jan6BDmWfG
Evan Closky, the Sports Director for 10 Tampa Bay news shared a video of the moment on X. In the video, the home run ball flies into the stands, and the grown man begins to tussle with the girl over it. Eventually, the man steals the baseball from the girl and proudly returns to his seat while she sadly goes back to hers.
Soon, we see Ryan Bass, a sideline reporter, bring both the girl and her younger brother baseballs to try and make them feel better.
“After a grown man wrestles a HR ball away from a little girl, @Ry_Bass is there to make the situation right,” Closky wrote. “🫡 to my guy.”
People wasted no time tearing into the guy.
He’s not even a man to grab a baseball from a child 💩💩💩
— Beth Tadlock (@NonnaBT) April 29, 2026
“What a huge, cowardly jerk that would steal that ball from a little girl!”
“The dad was a lot nicer than I would’ve been,” someone else quipped.
“Did he REALLY NEED that baseball? What a terrible thing to do to a young girl.”
“Actually catching a routine HR baseball could be a prize but chasing it around the bleachers?”
The girl’s mom spoke out.
Nikki DeVore posted about the incident on Facebook, giving people more insight into what happened.
“You all watched the man steal the ball from my daughter,” she wrote. “You know my son went to ask him for the ball, which was so brave. I just have to say thank you to Tampa for broadcasting it, when Cleveland broadcast cut to puppies rather than show the man stealing the ball from a child. I cannot thank Ryan and Tampa enough for making things right.”
She went on to praise her children for the way they handled the situation, and thanked Tampa fans for sticking up for her daughter.
“The pressure resulted in the man giving her the home run ball back 4-5 innings later towards the end of the game. It wasn’t the same but we appreciated him doing the right thing,” she added, joking that it saved her husband from “catching an assault charge after the game.”
The man who stole the baseball also spoke out.
After going viral for being the man who steals a baseball, local Cleveland business owner Max Quinn went on the local news to publicly apologize for what he did.
“I’m so utterly sorry for everything that’s transpired. … It was a heat-of-the-moment thing. I made a bad decision; a lot of bad decisions. I’m paying for it online,” Quinn said in an interview on WJW FOX 8 that took place on April 29.
Quinn told the news anchors he saw the glove, but “didn’t know it was a little girl” on the other side. After her little brother went to ask for the ball back, Quinn refused. He now realizes that move was “a big mistake.”
“I went back to my seat, and I heard it from the fans and the people. … I was sitting there, and I’m like, ‘I won’t be able to sleep at night if I don’t give this ball back,” he said. Except he waited a few innings to make things right, as DeVore pointed out.
As a result of his public mistake, Quinn’s business was bombed with one-star reviews on Google, and he faced overwhelming backlash. However, the girl, whose name is Evelyn, sent him a message saying she forgives him and hopes others will too.
“I hope that people in the city and people here in Cleveland and Guardians fans and everybody can forgive me, give me a second chance. … That’s all I can ask for,” Quinn said.
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