Back on Sept. 5, facing the Miami Marlins in the top of the fourth inning, Philadelphia's Harrison Bader socked a Lake Bachar slider deep into the left-field stands to give the Phillies a 5-1 lead. The now-infamous part happened at the far end of the ball's flight.
As caught on the game broadcast, the ball bounces away from two fans, one of them a nondescript guy, the other a woman in a Phillies jersey with a distinctive short white-on-black hairstyle. A row or two down, a middle-aged guy picks up the ball, carries it half a row away, and hands it to a kid in his party. Just then, the woman with the white hair storms back into the frame, grabs the man by the arm, and gesticulates angrily into his shocked face, pointing back in the direction she'd come from. (Later, smartphone video from nearby attendees will confirm what anyone watching will have guessed she is yelling, and how shrilly she is yelling it: "You took it from me!") For some 20 interminable seconds she yells at this guy, in front of the kid and the world, until, with visible disgust, he takes the ball from the kid and gives it to her. She turns and storms back to her seat. Phillies Karen is born.
The "Karen" portion of "Phillies Karen" feels a bit dated as an insult in the current political environment, but the negative and aesthetic connotations of the name persevere. If you are going to pick a derogatory insult for a white woman with a prominent haircut haranguing a kid and his dad (also wearing Phillies gear) for a dropped home run ball, why not go with Karen? The television commentator was quick to find the nickname himself as the moment replayed: "A little Karen action."
In the end, the story is a feel-good one. Both teams did their best to make it up to the kid. Harrison Bader and the Phillies gave him a signed bat; unfortunately, because it was a Phillies away game in Miami, the poor kid also had to accept a goodie bag of Marlins gear midgame. The tidy resolution, however, was not the key point of the following virality. Within the baseball ecosystem, the Savannah Bananas recreated the scene starring the Grinch in the Karen role. A few days ago, some Phillies fans attended the game dressed as the Phillies Karen. Jason Benetti took the opportunity to engage in some interleague banter, after a Tigers fan snagged a foul ball and gave it to a toddler.
Per the unspoken rules of baseball catching conduct, that is what you are meant to do with a foul ball after you catch it or pick it up: Give it to a kid. The rules for catching home runs are a bit different, as baseball-catching as an industry has become increasingly fiscally responsible and, thus, legislated. It's generally frowned upon to run across multiple seats to try to catch a homer, but if you catch it clean, then there's no debate over who owns the ball, and also no need, really, to give it to a kid. If an attempted catch ends in a scramble over a loose ball, the rules get a bit muddier over possession and allowable decorum, but if it's an arbitrary and not particularly meaningful home run in, say, a Phillies–Marlins regular season game, then people usually don't care all that much. If an attempted catch ends in a scramble, and if the ball happens to be, say, Shohei Ohtani's 50th home run in a historic 50-homer, 50-steal season (not to be confused with this year's 50-homer, 50-strikeout season), then there might be a lawsuit over what constitutes catching a baseball that eventually sold for $3.6 million at auction.
If the Phillies Karen incident were isolated to the baseball ecosystem, and the act of baseball-catching etiquette, then the subsequent fallout would look very different. Of course, the woman did not go viral for, say, debate over whether it's appropriate to run across the full length of a row to try to snag a baseball. She went viral for berating a dad in front of his kid over a home run ball that really didn't matter very much at all, irrespective of whom it belonged to. As an entity, she is less Zack Hample, the basically professional MLB ballhawk, and much more within the school of the man who went viral at the U.S. Open for taking a signed tennis cap that was intended for a kid—in other words, an asshole, of which there are many, caught being an asshole to a child at a televised sporting event, where there are cameras everywhere, and going viral for it.
On the YouTube outrage marketplace, it has become content. Los Angeles's KTLA 5 asks, "Who is 'Phillies Karen'? Her 'workplace' responds." Megyn Kelly is joined by not just one, but two guests to break down the incident on her show. The third-to-last video posted to Charlie Kirk's YouTube account is titled, "The Key to the Phillies Karen That Everyone is Missing." Kirk, too, has a guest to help him find the titular key. ("He's got, maybe, a little Aspergery-type thing," Kirk says of the father. "And I'm not accusing him, you just can kind of tell that there's something that's not quite right there.")
What do we even get from this? It is gross, and with two similar stories in such a small window of time, it is exhausting. While years ago, a viral jerk could have tidily left the public imagination once a few days passed, now it is content. Videos with AI-generated imagery now depict Phillies Karen sobbing; robotic voices invent stories of her having lost her job or gone into hiding; these will remain on the internet forever. Closure vanishes. Everyone has to get their licks in. It cannot die.
For the common person encountering the Phillies Karen, there is an easy, gratuitous appeal to these stories. Assholes are everywhere in day-to-day life. Some of them are evil, and powerful, and untouchable. Sometimes it is difficult to imagine that anyone is punished for meanness or cruelty. Well, here is an asshole facing off against the scariest enemy: a sports team's public relations infrastructure that knows it can kill two birds with one stone by handing out some goods to leave a kid happier and garner some public goodwill for the brand at the same time. How often do you have a guaranteed good ending in life? Here is one: The asshole, if not the evil, is defeated in the end.
