You don’t have to be a Phillies fan to remember the infamous incident in which former-Phillie Jayson Werth screamed at a fan in front of his son for getting in the way of a ball that he was in the midst of chasing.
Cameras caught the right-fielder screaming “Get out of my f-ing way!” to Patrick Boyle.
Shocked, the Havertown father comforted his 10-year-old son, but the disappointed duo left Citizens Bank Park that July night embarrassed, appalled and without a foul ball to call their own.
Lucky for them, a little thing called Karma came knocking. Not only did Poppa Boyle catch one foul ball, he caught two in Sunday’s 3-1 win over the Oakland A’s.
The first was a foul hit by Roy Halladay right up the first baseline (coincidentally, Boyle was wearing a Halladay jersey).
The second catch came in the top of the 8th, a foul ball caught, sans glove.
Wow. What are the odds?
Well, we put our trusty math skills to work and this is what we came up with:
Based on an MLB.com report, approximately 30 to 40 foul balls are hit into the stands during any given game. We decided to go with an average of 35 balls per game. Divide that by the Phillies attendance average over the last five years (43,489) and you get 1,233. That means during any game, a fan has a one in 1,233 chance of catching a foul ball at Citizens Bank Park.
So you can imagine the how improbable it is to catch TWO in a single game (we’re not figuring those stats out for you. We’re writers, not mathematicians!).
Needless to say, dad and son left the ballpark last night, happy fans, but not before taking a second to share their excitement with NBC10’s John Clark.
“The fans were going nuts…One guys a few rows back was like, ‘Hey, can we switch seats so we can have some fun too?’”
And even though the Boyle’s have long since forgiven Jayson Werth -- who’s been wonderful to the family since the “scolding” incident -- we imagine that catching two foul balls in one game is just the icing on the cake.
