Blooming Prairie neighbor hoarding foul balls in real-life Sandlot situation
Blooming Prairie baseball foul ball controversy goes viral
A real-life Sandlot situation is playing out in Blooming Prairie. Parents are upset over their baseballs disappearing when they go into a neighbor’s yard. The dispute has gone viral on social media.
BLOOMING PRAIRIE, Minn. (FOX 9) - Parents in a southern Minnesota baseball league are crying foul over the neighbor who’s hoarding all their foul balls.
Baseball dispute in Blooming Prairie going viral
A real-life Sandlot situation is playing out in Blooming Prairie. Parents are upset over their baseballs disappearing when they go into a neighbor’s yard. The dispute has gone viral on social media.
Crying foul
Baseball black hole:
Across Highway 46 from the Blooming Prairie field is a baseball dead end, a place where balls disappear as if hit over the fence in "The Sandlot," into the yard of The Beast.
"The Beast in human form, yeah," said Corey Johnson.
The property owner confronted kids retrieving foul balls last year and didn’t like it any better when a grandparent tried to talk it out. The dispute escalated last weekend when the owner’s father stood guard during a game.
"When this situation happened on Saturday, I was like, okay, now it's getting a little out of hand," said Kelly LaMotte.
LaMotte and Johnson have kids on the 15-and-under team.
Costly concern
Collecting confrontations:
They say five to 10 balls fly across the street every game and since Jon Peterson bought the place in 2022, they rarely come back.
"I said, ‘Can we just at least get the balls back?’" Johnson said of his interaction with Peterson. "He said, ‘Nope, I'm keeping them for a collection of baseballs.’"
So now every bad swing could cost the team $8 to $10 for a ball replacement.
"We're scraping to get money as it is," Johnson said.
Most fields in the league are away from private property, but Zumbrota teams play on a field right next to a townhome community.
Neighbors say if a foul ball comes their way, they let a kid come and get it or they throw it back themselves.
"That’s the way it should be," said Bonnie Radke, one of the Zumbrota townhome residents.
The Petersons previously complained about people parking along their property lines during games, but that’s not legal any more.
They didn’t return messages Thursday.
No Fun League?
Twins step up:
Their stance took some of the fun out of America’s pastime for the kids at first, according to their parents.
But the community rallied behind them.
People have donated money for new balls and even the Twins offered up a bucket of balls in response to LaMotte’s TikTok post.
"As a mom, you know, that's the joy, you know, they love the Minnesota Twins," LaMotte said. "They love the game of baseball. So just for someone to be taking that joy away is just, it's crazy."
So the Twins are now the heroes in the developing legend of the hoarded balls.
And as they said in The Sandlot, "Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."