A young Phillies supporter led to fans being able to keep foul balls on this week in Philly history
The Phillies’ policy once said fans who caught foul balls had to give them back. But 11-year-old Robert Cotter's catch on July 18, 1923, changed that.
“Toughie Reds” wasn’t going quietly.
On July 18, 1923, this Phillies fan, real name Robert Cotter, caught a foul ball in the right-field bleachers during a day game against the Chicago Cubs at North Philly’s National League Park.
And the Phillies wanted the ball back.
The 11-year-old refused to cough it up to security guards, nicknamed “red caps.”
“I started running up the steps to get out,” Cotter later recalled. “I looked up and saw a red cap [guard] coming toward me. I turned around to run the other way, and there was another one standing behind me.”
Tough kid
It may be important to note that “Toughie Reds” did not pay for his ticket.
The kid and his brother, Raymond, ran out of their house on North 15th Street toward the ballpark, and climbed up a rain spout and into the ramshackle ballpark unofficially nicknamed (derisively by The Inquirer) “Baker Bowl.”
But not paying the price of admission seemed to pale in comparison to taking home the ball.
Baseball precedent
Since Cotter would not relinquish his grip on the ball, ownership saw an opportunity.
It was a chance to establish, once and for all, a legal precedent.
The Phillies’ policy in the 1920s said fans who caught foul balls had to give them back. They were team property, and not souvenirs. Mostly because kids like Cotter would try and sell the balls outside the park after outrunning the red caps.
On that July day in 1923, he couldn’t outrun them.
He was pulled into a nearby police station, where he was arrested for larceny, and spent the night in the House of Correction.
The next morning, Cotter and a Phillies rep went before a Municipal Court judge. The court sided with the kid, who was “following his natural instincts,” the judge noted, before adding: “It’s a thing I would do myself.”
Cotter walked, and the Phillies instituted a new policy of allowing fans to keep balls hit into the stands. And, eventually, every team in the major leagues would follow suit.
In 1998, to show there were no hard feelings, the team welcomed back Cotter and his family to Veterans Stadium, and he left with autographed baseballs from the team and Phillies Hall of Fame pitcher Robin Roberts.
Free of charge.
