When BallGate 2012 Goes Too Far

Alright, so you're probably more than familiar with what the title is referencing, as it's one of the only things that people really care about today (besides the NFL Draft and Jordan Walden farting and falling down in the ninth inning). Deadspin threw up a short blurb on it that attracted a quarter-million hits in like 18 hours, the Yahoo! Sports piece on it has elicited 5,300-plus comments, and on it goes. Richard Durrett, for his part, thinks that if you catch a foul ball or procure one from a player via other means, you should give the ball to a kid, even if you have one at home who really wants a ball himself.

I, for one, find it hard to believe that this story blew up in the manner that it did (though I guess that was to be expected once Michael Kay himself blew up at the couple in question on the YES telecast), but if you pointed a gun to my head and demanded that I give you my position on the matter, I'd say that it's bad form to render snap judgments and automatically assume the worst of the two fans who have been villified left and right today. Based on the Twitter response I've seen today, I'm not alone in that sentiment, but, then again, who really cares, right? (Snarky retort: "At least 250,000 people care.")

Anyway, WFAA apparently dispatched intrepid investigative reporter David Schechter to identify this menace to society, and thank goodness that we've finally gotten down to the bottom of this mystery:

Southlake PIO confirms man who caught ball near crying Ranger fan is Sean Leonard, Dpty. Finance Director. twitter.com/DavidSchechter…

— David Schechter (@DavidSchechter) April 26, 2012

To which I countered with:

Great, so the intrepid DFW media has ID'd the guy who didn't give the ball to the kid. Why don't we go ahead & lynch him while we're at it?

— Joey Matches (@BBTiA) April 26, 2012

To which MJH fired back:

@BBTiA no lynching. Just some nice public humiliation. It will be good for the world's oldest teenager.

— Michael Hindman (@mjhindman) April 26, 2012

Are we really accomplishing anything constructive by outing this guy? I get that there's probably some moralistic sense of duty at the center of all of this and the idea that you can (a) heap layers of guilt upon this guy for not giving the ball to the kid and (b) deter others from doing the same thing by outing him, but why is this such a terrible thing? Again, how do we know that this guy doesn't have a kid at home, or some other worthy case that he's intending to give the ball to? Why is there this sense that the kid inherently deserves the ball, even though he's probably likelier than not to forget about the significance of the ball altogether within an hour?

And why the hell did I just write 450 words on this nonsense? Probably because I do what I want.