A 12 year-old girl encouraged to give up an important Ryan Howard home run ball she caught used a lawyer to help get it back.
Jennifer Valdivia wasn’t expecting to latch onto a little piece of baseball history this summer.
Jennifer and her family were at the Marlins-Phillies game July 17 when Ryan Howard cracked his 200th home run. She grabbed it but after things quieted down, a Phillies representative asked for the ball, offering a plain Howard autographed ball and a short meeting with the slugger in exchange.
She didn’t know it at the time, but the home run made Howard the youngest player ever to reach that milestone. It certainly has value on the collectors market and once her family realized the trade may have cost them some cash, they went to an attorney.
He filed a lawsuit, demanding the ball be returned. Did they have a case? Who knows, but it’s clear that waging a court battle against a 12 year-old probably would not have played well in the media.
So…the attorney, Norman Kent, was glad to tell the tale to the Miami Herald, which has video and a story.
