I went to the Ballpark in Arlington this weekend to watch the Rangers play the Yankees and I was curious about a pre-game announcement I heard. The announcer said something to the effect of: “Any foul ball that enters the seating area is yours to keep as a souvenier of tonight’s game, but please be courteous to other fans when trying to catch foul balls…”
It seems strange that they chose to specify that a foul ball is yours to keep. This wording makes it sound like they intentionally exclude home run balls from the category of ‘free souveniers.’
Is this to preserve the right of a player to demand the return of a milestone home run ball? I’ve only been to a couple of other MLB ballparks but I don’t remember any announcement like this being made. Can anyone shed some light on this?
My guess is they just don’t want to encourage fans to catch potential home run balls. Last night, for example, a shot off Pedro Martinez to right field was called a home run after a fan reached below the fence line and touched it. Had the fan not touched it, it would never have been ruled a dinger.
Historically speaking, home runs balls have become the property of the fan who catches it. In fact, there was recently a famous court case WRT two fans who caught a Barry Bonds home run ball and ended up fighting about it in the stands. The courts ordered the two to split the (proceeds of the sale of the) ball.
Could a team adopt a “it’s still ours, give it back” policy? I would imagine that they could, but I’ll let one of our lawyers give us the Straight Dope.
Yeah, I remembered the legal wrangling over the Bonds HR, which seemed to me to give some precedent to the idea that it was ‘catchers keepers’ on homers, too. That made me wonder if maybe in light of that dispute, the Rangers were trying to avoid a similar situation. Seems like if two fans were in a legal dispute over Palmiero’s 500th homer, Tom Hicks could just say, ‘Sorry guys, it’s mine.’
Of course, I don’t know why it would be to the team’s advantage to go taking home run balls away from fans, at least from a PR perspective. The Rangers might become the only team whose fans throw back their own home runs in disgust.
Not that Rangers fans don’t have enough to be disgusted with…
The point is to be courteous of other fans. People ever evidently fighting over the balls, or pushing people aside to get them. The announcement is to try to stop that.
The mention of foul balls is just a reflection of the fact that there are many more foul balls hit than home runs.
I’d think it’d be hard for a team to get a legal ruling that the ball be returned to them.
Let me add this: if they were trying to assert their right to have the ball returned, they would have said, “All home run balls must be returned.” You can’t assert a new policy by failing to mention it. If they tried to claim the home run ball was theirs because of this annoucement, they’d be laughed out of court.
A baseball is the legal property of the legal entity that is the business side of a baseball team. Under the ground rules of the park in which a game is played, balls hit into the stands (fair or foul) may be, and usually are, considered to be “given” to the fan who catches them. As any fan will recognize, kids love to be the one who gets to a foul ball first and to have in their very own hot little hands a ball that was really hit by a major leaguer.
I would assume that a ball that has legal significance, such as being the one hit for an historic home run, can be recovered by the club (usually in behalf of the player) because they retain legal title to it. It is, of course, customary to give the fan who catches or recovers the historic hit a bunch of gifts and perqs.
They would have a very hard time trying to change things so that the teams could place a claim on a ball hit into the stands. Considering the events of the past couple of decades that have eroded the passion that many feel for the sport, it would be nothing short of a public relations nightmare.
OTOH, it is a pretty common occurrance for players to bargain for a ball that has some significance for them - thier first major league home run, or some other milestone hit. The fan is often happy to give up a ball (that isn’t worth a million dollars) for some free tickets and maybe some autographed equiptment or a jersey.
I’m pretty sure that there is enough legal stuff (using the technical term) that states that a baseball hit into the stands is “abandoned property”. So I don’t think a team could assert any sort of claim to a ball hit into the stands.
One of McGwire’s home run balls in 1998 was caught by a Cardinals groundskeeper and there was some issue about whether or not an employee of the team was required to return a ball. Since the guy volunteered it, I don’t think it was ever decided.
IANAL, but I don’t think it would be abandoned property if the team announced the policy beforehand. After all, if I hit a ball into your yard, that doesn’t make it your ball.
That was the record-breaking #62, actually. I imagine they gave him something as a nice gesture. A homer belongs to the fan, though at Wrigley Field, for example, its customary to throw home run balls hit by opposing players back onto the field. Of course, they’re Cubs fans, so they don’t really count.
It’s always fuzzy and difficult, but if a fan reaches over the wall and catches a ball that wouldn’t have gone out, it’s not necessarily a home run. The umpires have the ability to call the player out (I think) in such a case, though it doesn’t happen much since they’re not usually in a good position to judge.
In the case of fan interference, the ball is immediately dead and the umpire pretty much gets to use his best judgement to decide what would have happened without the interference.
Per rule 3.16 - “When there is spectator interference with any thrown or batted ball, the ball shall be dead at the moment of interference and the umpire shall impose such penalties as in his opinion will nullify the act of interference.”
Which means, if he decides the defensive player would have caught it, the batter is out. But he could also decide that he wouldn’t have gotten it and to award the batter how ever many bases he feels is appropriate.
On a similar (but tangential) note. I was living in Baltimore when Cal Ripkin passed Lou Gehrig’s streak and during the day he tied the record and the day he went one better he hit a home run. The fan who caught the ball wanted to give it back as a landmark ball to Cal Ripkin (he’s a walking legend in Baltimore). There then ensued all kinds of press about if the fan gave the ball back to Cal he’d be liable to pay a huge chunk in taxes because he’d given a gift that was worth greater than the IRS allows as a one time gift. Half the folks argued that the ball was [technically] only worth the $5 or so that the club had paid originally and the other half claimed that the ball on the free market would be worth an astronomical amout to a collector. I’m not sure how it all worked out (because I moved away fro Baltimore a few months later) but from your question, I assume if the club doesn’t state the home run ball belongs to the fans it could then technically “demand” their ball back and the fan wouldn’t have to sell his house to the IRS to pay for his generosity.
Like I said, tangential !!
The judge in the Barry Bonds case found that a ball is property of MLB when it is in use but that once the ball is struck, it becomes intentionally abandoned property, and the first person to lay their hands on it become the new owner. That case didn’t consider the matter of foul balls.
Different sport, but I was speaking this a.m. with a cow-orker who has season tix to - gasp! - arena football. He mentioned a scramble for a football that came into the stands in front of him, and said in arena football, fans got to keep such balls as souveneirs.
Hockey fans can keep pucks, yes. (Pro) Footballs don’t generally go into the stands, but if a player scores, signs a ball, and gives it to a fan (cough cough Terell Owens), it’s theirs. Basketballs don’t usually go far either, and I don’t think fans get to keep those.
I know pro and college football require you to give the ball back (if, say, a field goal goes through the netting and into the stands). I can’t imagine this is much of an issue in basketball or soccer, but I’m pretty sure the rule would be the same there.
What about tennis? What happens if the ball takes a strange skip and bounces into the stands?
This obviously isn’t an issue in golf, since the ball must always be played where it lies. But a related question: say a fan, with no prompting from the golfer, picks up a wayward shot and tosses it back into the fairway. Is the golfer penalized in any way? How do they spot the ball for the golfer’s next shot?
