No harm, no foul: Mike Trout greets fan who interfered with catch

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The story typically has a predictable ending. A fan rips a baseball from the hand of a player trying to make a catch, then is immediately ejected while drawing the scorn of fellow fans.

But on Saturday there was a different ending when a Houston Astros fan took a foul ball out of the glove of leaping Angels outfielder Mike Trout. The three-time American League MVP was pursuing the ball toward and then into the right-field seats at Houston’s Daikin Park, where he and a fan briefly struggled for possession it. Trout was the one who came up empty.

“I just didn’t know what was going on,” Jared Whalen, the Astros fan, explained to the Athletic. “I didn’t realize it was a play. It was coming at my son’s face. I just reached out.”

Trout immediately requested an interference call from umpires, who argued that the ball was out of play when the contact between Trout and Whalen occurred. The Angels did not challenge the play.

“I was more looking at the ball coming for my son’s face,” Whalen said. “I made sure I wasn’t in the field of play. I apologized, and [Trout] nodded his head and we’re good, I think.”

They were more than good. After the Angels’ 4-1 victory, Trout met Whalen and his son and they left with an autograph ball, which Whalen had kept.

“I got kids myself. The way he reacted, he obviously didn’t do it on purpose,” Trout said. “Well, I don’t know if he didn’t do it on purpose, but just the way he reacted, and his kid, and they got moved. They probably spent hard [earned] money on those tickets.”

The situation was reminiscent of Game 4 of the 2024 World Series, when two New York Yankees fans ripped a ball struck by Gleyber Torres from the glove of Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts. Torres was ruled out and the fans, who were immediately ejected, were banned from attending all MLB games.

Whalen, who was immediately apologetic, said felt the play was more like the one involving Jeffrey Maier, the 12-year-old Yankees fan who reached over the fence to catch a flyball that gave the New York an eighth-inning, game-tying home run by Derek Jeter in Game 1 of the 1996 American League Championship Series against the Baltimore Orioles. The Yankees went on to win the game in 11 innings and take the series in five games, unofficially marking the beginning of their most recent dynasty.

First-base umpire Alan Porter explained to a pool reporter Saturday that “the flyball was in the stands, it was not over the field of play. Once the ball is outside of the field of play,” he continued, “the fielder goes into the stands at his own risk. So the ball being touched by the fan does not create spectator interference at that point.”