In the final game of the series versus the Pittsburgh Pirates, Bryce Harper struck out on a check swing and then charged the umpire before getting ejected. This led to a young fan having "the best baseball game he's ever been to."
It was revealed that a 10-year-old named Hayden Dorfman caught Bryce Harper's helmet after Harper had a fit of rage and threw the souvenir to the young fan.
Moments after the situation, security came up to the young kid and told him Harper wanted to sign the helmet. The kid even admitted that Harper was his favorite player and then said it was "the best baseball game he's ever been to," according to Philly Inquirer's Alex Coffey.
Harper was ejected by Angel Hernandez, which marks at least the second time in the past two seasons that a Phillies player has flipped on Hernandez for continuing to make bad calls. Both of these incidents occurred because the hitters should not have struck out, but MLB will continue to protect some of the worst umpires.
Bryce Harper turned a typically bad Angel Hernandez moment into a great night for a fan
During Thursday night's game, Hernandez was at third base, meaning he was the home plate umpire the game prior, and it wasn't a good game he called that night. In the game, he, of course, liked to call balls strikes, with one of them coming in the bottom of the fourth inning with the bases loaded and one out, and a ball was called a strike when there was almost enough room to fit another ball.
In that game, Hernandez blew eight calls, including two obvious strikes as balls and six balls that weren't even close to the zone as strikes. The bad part is this wasn't even a bad game for umpire standards, where he ranked just around average, so imagine if he had a bad game.
Instead of ever apologizing, Hernandez prefers to throw players like Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber out of the game because they are right. While both of these incidents are around a year apart, they both shouldn't have been ejected when they were in the right.