Jason Kelce signs and replaces fan’s Eagles jersey after losing it during Mt. Joy concert at Linc
After Julianne Affanato threw her kelly green Jason Kelce jersey on stage at the Mt. Joy show, it never made its way back to her.
Julianne Affanato walked into Jason Kelce’s concert with Mt. Joy wearing a kelly green number 62 jersey. After fans started throwing their gear up to Kelce during the show, Affagato tried her own luck.
“I never really even thought about him signing it,” said Affanato, of Northern Liberties. “It’s my jersey that I own, I have my kelly green Kelce jersey because I’m a huge fan of Jason Kelce. Obviously I knew he was performing, but then I saw everyone else throwing jerseys up onto the stage, and so I threw mine up, too.”
Only, Affanato’s jersey never made its way back down.
Kelce threw it back — but in the wrong direction, and far away from the gated-off VIP section, which Affanato’s friend, who works at the Linc, had gotten her into. But, determined to get her jersey back, Affanato hopped over the railing and started asking everyone around her if they’d caught her jersey.
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“I watched it make it up on stage, watched him sign it, and I was so excited,” Affanato said. “I guess he hadn’t seen where it came from, and tossed it in the totally opposite direction, and I was immediately like, ‘Oh my god, no. This crowd is huge.’ I was asking everyone in the area, ‘Have you seen this?’ I stayed around until the area totally cleared out, but no luck finding it.”
Affanato turned to the only place she could think of — social media. She posted in the Philaqueens Facebook group, which she’d been in for years, since she’d seen quite a few people find lost things and knew it was a positive space.
Luckily enough, one woman in the group’s husband worked at Garage Beer, which Kelce is an investor in, and was going to see Kelce the following day.
“I was shocked,” Affanato said. “I never expected anything like that to happen. I was just hoping maybe, by some chance, someone knew who had gotten the jersey.”
She connected Affanato with Kelce and Garage Beer, who sent her a signed Garage Beer Kelce jersey and a signed case of beer, plus a video of Kelce apologizing for the mistake. Kelce also said in the video that he’d be sending her a new signed kelly green jersey shortly, to replace the one she’d lost.
“I’ve been a huge fan of Kelce forever, both because of his on-field stuff, but a lot of his off-field stuff,” Affanato said. “He just seems like such a genuinely good guy, so I’m not even surprised that when word got back to him he cared and that he wanted to do something, because he just seems like such a good, positive guy. But it was just amazing that word even did get back to him.”