A young Phillies fan was left in tears after losing a home run ball. Meet the usher who came to the rescue.
After a fan dropped a Kyle Schwarber home run ball in his section, usher Richard Lewandowski ran to grab another ball for the man's devastated son in an interaction that quickly went viral.
![Phillies usher Richard Lewandowski tips his cap to fans in section 111/112 at Citizens Bank Park before the Phillies played the Oakland A's on Saturday.](https://www.inquirer.com/resizer/mE2t8Wd1JfTOssyB9KIdu2Nx1_Y=/760x507/smart/filters:format(webp)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/WPKAPS4XMRA3HDIXGHILCSASF4.jpg)
Being an usher at Citizens Bank Park can be a thankless job.
With new pitch clock restrictions, fans can’t go to their seats during an at-bat, and instead have to wait until the at-bat is over to walk through the aisles, which leads to a lot of complaints from fans itching to see the stars at the plate.
But on Thursday, Richard Lewandowski showed fans the best part of what ushers do — give fans an amazing experience at the ballpark. After a fan dropped a Kyle Schwarber home run ball in his section, Lewandowski ran to grab another ball for his devastated son in an interaction that quickly went viral.
Lewandowski often picks up stray baseballs from batting practice in the outfield and keeps them in his pocket for the game to hand out to kids. If a kid brings a glove and misses a foul ball, or if someone is there for his or her first game, Lewandowski has baseballs on hand to brighten the young fan’s day.
“I went down and I said to [the father], I tapped him on his shoulder, and I said to him, ‘Listen, young man, we don’t allow errors in our section,’ ” Lewandowski told The Inquirer. “He goes, ‘I know, I know. I’m very embarrassed.’ I say, ‘You were on TV. You know that?’ and I said, ‘Are you going anywhere?’ ”
He’d left his usual baseball in the break room before the game, so he had to go back and get it. Lewandowski went back to retrieve a ball for the family, and sneaked back through the section to surprise the family with a game-used baseball.
“I went down and I gave the kid a ball, and his frown turned into a smile, and his father thanked me, and I said, ‘Well, I just think I just made your day, son, and I think I just saved your marriage,’ ” Lewandowski said. “And that was it, and all of a sudden it blew up on the internet, and everybody started calling. Everybody I knew, people I knew from 15 years ago said, ‘Hey, seen you on TV, that’s a great thing that you did.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s what we do there,’ because we want people to feel comfortable. We want people to have a good time, and we want them to come back and enjoy a major league ballgame.”
The boy followed Lewandowski back up to the top of the section and gave him a big hug.
“We have great ushers, we really do,” play-by-play man Tom McCarthy said on the Phillies broadcast. “The best,” John Kruk added.
The attention shocked Lewandowski. Fans came up to him and asked to take a photo with him, and the clip even made Good Morning America. In his eyes, he was just doing his job, something he’d done many times before. He also received praise from his managers and fellow ushers.
“They’re all coming over, shaking my hand, ‘You’re the guy!’ ” Lewandowski said. “People I didn’t even talk to came up to me and say, ‘Oh, you’re the guy!’ They’re all saying, ‘Great job, great job.’ I know it’s a great job. Really, I was just doing my job, but I like to make people feel that they have a good experience at the ballpark, and it’s memorable and they come back for future games, and they don’t go away with a bad feeling about, usher told us do this. But I got a good report from a lot of people who came to games prior to this, and they see me, they said, ‘Oh, look, there’s Uncle Richie.’ ”
Lewandowski has been an usher at Citizens Bank Park for six years. He’s a lifelong Phillies fan, and his son was hired as a bartender at the ballpark years ago. When Lewandowski retired, his son encouraged him to consider becoming an usher at the ballpark, and he’s been working there ever since. He’s never had a moment quite like this.
“I have time between when I show up for work, and we have a certain time that we have to go to our section,” Lewandowski said. “It’s usually like 15, 20 minutes, so I go sit in the outfield for about 10, 15 minutes, and some players hit the balls out there, and I take them and give them to the kids and it just so happened, it was a perfect, perfect moment [Thursday] night.”