A woman steals a discarded baseball from a young girl at Minute Maid Park.This clip has made the rounds - 4,893,135 views, as of right now - since a YouTuber uploaded it on August 14th 2012 and dubbed it: Evil woman steals ball from little girl. What the woman did was terrible, no doubt about it.
The high five just adds insult to injury. What a giant snatch.
I ran into this clip on Google+ yesterday, and again on Facebook just a few minutes ago, and I wanted to find out more: who this woman was, what she was thinking, how the little girl felt, and whether the woman made some recompense afterwards.
In football, if a wide receiver goes up for a catch, the cornerback or safety defending him can snatch the ball away. Exactly what this woman did.
Obviously she and this girl were not playing a sport. Yet, they were at a sporting event, and we know that sporting events can be just as competitive for the fans as they are for the players. The catfight between fans of opposing teams, for example, can get downright nasty.
I couldn't find any information on the woman or the girl, but reactions of people were a study in humankind.
Scott Sloan, with 700WLW News/Talk radio, posted the clip on his blog on September 25th - There's a Special Place in Hell for This Lady:
Can you believe this woman?? And the guy giving her the high five afterward?As you can imagine, the clip triggered a firestorm on social media. Some people reacted with such viciousness and vulgarity, as to make the woman's action benign by comparison. I won't posted their comments, but will post the top two comments on YouTube:
I hope they replayed this on the big screen during the game.I imagine Minute Maid Park did replay this on the big screen. I imagine there would have been strong fan reaction, and an explicit call for the woman to do the right thing, after the wrong she did.
But I don't know. From this short clip, other fans looked rather nonchalant.
I hope that lady sees this video and realizes what she did to that poor little girl! She should apologize to that little girl and give her the ball back. She is the one who actually caught it! Unbelievable!!!!!I would like to believe that this woman ran into this clip, soon after it was posted, sought the girl out, apologized to her, and gave her ball.
But who knows, maybe nothing of the sort happened.
In football, and also in basketball and hockey, takeaways are fair game. But that comment - "She is the one who actually caught it!" - reminds us that takeaways are not fair game in real life. Yet, because we fashioned an artificial context that sanctions such actions, we've actually blurred the lines between reality and artifice.
Perhaps, too, we created that artificial context in order to permit a well-circumscribed release of our aggression and competitiveness, which real life would otherwise not allow us. But again our mental capacity, even our moral fortitude, is imperfect, and in the heat and speed of the moment we cannot always see or heed the difference.
Metallicus added a bit more color on his (or her) blog two days ago - There's A Special Place In Hell For This Lady:
Imagine you're a little girl at a baseball game and one of your favorite players throws a foul ball to you in the stands, but just as you are about to grab the ball some 50 year old hag grabs the ball from your hands and starts to celebrate. Well that is just what happened in this video of this little girl having the ball taken from her tiny fingers at a recent professional baseball game.
The look on the little girls face is heartbreaking. I would love to know what kind of human being does that to a little girl. How does someone like that woman live with herself?
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There's a special place in hell for people who blurt out "Hey you're blushing!" when you're already really embarrassed.
— Jia Mustafa (@jiamustafa) September 28, 2013
There's a special place in hell for people who don't show consideration and decency to those who work in the service industry
— Brea (@TheRedGrrl) September 28, 2013
There's a special place in hell for guys who get a girl pregnant then leave her.
— Jessica (@Make_it_Jnasty) September 17, 2013
Welcome to Twitter, @madeleine! There's a special place in hell for women who don't RT other women.
— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) September 26, 2013
But the most detailed response I saw was posted by a friend on Facebook just two hours ago:
When my son was about 7 years old, around 8 years ago, he wanted to buy his own ice cream cone. We were at a down town Chicago restaurant sitting on the upper floor. I gave him the money and he went downstairs to buy the ice cream. Some time passed and I was beginning to wonder 'what is taking so long' when one of the cleaning ladies from either central or south America came up to me quickly and said 'go downstairs' so I went... My son was standing at the counter and the lady behind the counter was just staring, dumfounded, and holding money in her hand. My child ordered the ice cream and he gave her the money which she already put in the register. A 'family', mother father and four kids, pushed him out of the way and were making the lady ignore my son, cancel his order and take their order. I told the lady to give my son his ice cream. The mother began screaming, 'who are you ? Who are you ?' . I said nothing. The manager was also standing there with a stupid blank look of his face. Then the father chimed in with manly authority and with a finger pointing directly into my face and said, 'Now look, we are here in the city enjoying our day and our children have to know they can have their way ' . I just looked at him and his finger , took my child by the hand and began walking away with our ice cream as the mother began screaming again and this is what she was saying, in an effort to insult me, "you have just one (child) .HA! I have four - look four !!!!!" ... I said nothing, but I was thinking "where I come from that's called 'dropping a litter'....Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!
Ron Villejo, PhD
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