--- title: Cubs Hook Up Kid After Foul Ball Stolen description: A gentleman helped himself to a baseball intended for a kid at the Chicago Cubs game on Saturday night. canonical: https://time.com/5345796/cubs-fan-steals-ball/ author: Ashley Hoffman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-07-23T12:52:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:53:58.682Z og:title: The Cubs Hooked Up This Kid After Someone Took His Foul Ball og:description: Everyone won in the end og:url: https://time.com/5345796/cubs-fan-steals-ball/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Cubs Hooked Up This Kid After Someone Took His Foul Ball twitter:description: Everyone won in the end twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The Cubs Hooked Up This Little Kid After Someone Took His Foul Ball by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Jul 23, 2018 12:52 PM UTC by [Ashley Hoffman](https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/) ## Ashley Hoffman Jul 23, 2018 12:52 PM UTC A gentleman appeared to help himself to a [baseball](http://time.com/5287319/baseball-betting-young-fans-attention-spans/) intended for a young kid at a Chicago Cubs game on Saturday night. Outfielder and first base coach Will Venable threw the ball to a small kid with a great seat during the Cubs-Cardinals [doubleheader game](https://www.si.com/mlb/2018/07/21/matt-carpenter-home-run-sixth-consecutive-game-cardinals), which the Cubs won handily. But it wasn’t an easy catch for the boy, and the ball dropped under his feet and into the hands of a fan in the row behind him, who scooped it up and flaunted the ball in the air with great celebration. > [](https://twitter.com/Cut4/status/1021147509849305089) Not to worry though: the team tweeted that the boy received not one but two baseballs used in the game. They even saw to it that Javy Baez signed them. > [](https://twitter.com/Cubs/status/1021134802580393989) It certainly looked like that Cubs-fans-steals-ball-from-a-kid scenario. But for those who criticized the widely circulated ball-scooping move, David Kaplan of Sports Talk Live said that the guy seen in the video helped the kid catch a foul ball earlier in the game. > [](https://twitter.com/thekapman/status/1021238617786765312) This is not the first time an errant piece of sports equipment has appeared to have been wrongfully snatched from its intended fan in a viral video. [Puck girl](http://time.com/5247961/capitals-puck-girl-player/) forever. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5345796/cubs-fan-steals-ball/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5345796/cubs-fan-steals-ball/"},"headline":"The Cubs Hooked Up This Little Kid After Someone Took His Foul Ball","datePublished":"2018-07-23T12:52:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:53:58.682Z","description":"Everyone won in the end","url":"https://time.com/5345796/cubs-fan-steals-ball/","keywords":["Newsfeed","onetime","Sports"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ashley Hoffman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ashley-hoffman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5345796/cubs-fan-steals-ball/","name":"The Cubs Hooked Up This Little Kid After Someone Took His Foul Ball"}}]}] ```