It happened a couple of years ago, but that didn’t stop a video of a woman taking a baseball from a little girl from going viral.
In an act that was caught on camera during a 2011 contest, a woman attending a game between the Houston Astros and the Arizona Diamondbacks went out of her way to steal a baseball that had been thrown in the direction of a young girl by Diamondsbacks first baseman Juan Miranda.
“What was that adult lady doing to that little gal?” the color analyst on the Arizona Diamondbacks broadcast asked. His partner offered a quick response.
“She took the ball,” the play-by-play man said. “Juan Miranda tried to give it to the little gal, and she took it from her.”
Watch The Video Here:
For her actions, the unidentified woman received a high-five when she returned to her seat from a nearby fan. The little girl, on the other hand, returned to her seat dejected.
The video went viral when it was noticed and re-posted by the New York Daily News on Wednesday. CBS Houston has even gone so far as to ask its audience to assist them in trying to identify the woman in the clip.
Thankfully, there is a happy ending to this story. The Arizona TV crew who first noticed the theft reached out to the Diamondbacks, secured a game ball, and presented it to the spurned little girl later in the game.
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At 110, oldest known Holocaust survivor dies
The world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor has died at age 110, her grandson told CNN Sunday.
Alice Herz-Sommer, a talented musician and pianist, lived alone in her London flat, according to a 2014 Oscar-nominated documentary about her extraordinary life.
“My world is music. I’m not interested in doing anything else,” she said in “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life.”
Originally from Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia, Herz-Sommer was imprisoned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II. It was music that saved her. She and others performed concerts that entertained the Nazis.
“I knew that we will play,” Herz-Sommer told the filmmakers. “And I was thinking when we can play it can’t be so terrible. The music, the music! Music is the first place of art. It brings us on an island with peace, beauty and love.”
Theresienstadt was a ghetto-labor camp to which the SS deported and then incarcerated certain categories of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews, based on their age, disability as a result of past military service, or domestic celebrity in the arts and other cultural life, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Herz-Sommer “grew up in a cultured and loving family which was part of the German-speaking Czech-Jewish assimilated society,” the documentary’s website says.
Her mother was a playmate of composer Gustav Mahler and as a child Herz-Sommer often played with German-language novelist Franz Kafka who came to her home for Sunday lunch.
Herz-Sommer was living in Prague when she received her deportation summons from the Nazis, the documentary site explains. Her mother and husband had already been transported to Auschwitz where they were gassed, the site says. Both Herz-Sommer and her 5-year-old son, it says, were sent to the Theresienstadt camp.
“As an adult Raffi had remarkably few dark memories of the camp,” according to the filmmakers.
The son said that his mother somehow “managed to protect him from the worst realities of life at the mercy of the Nazis.”
Herz-Sommer and her son returned to Prague after being liberated by the Soviet Army in May of 1945, according to the film.
A clip on the site shows Herz-Sommer laughing, something she did a lot of in her later years.
Her family surrounded her at her bedside before she died Sunday, her grandson Ariel Sommer told CNN.
“Much has been written about her, but to those of us who knew her best, she was our dear ‘Gigi.’
“She loved us, laughed with us, and cherished music with us,” he wrote. “She was an inspiration and our world will be significantly poorer without her by our side. We mourn her loss and ask for privacy in this very difficult moment.”
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F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve to make comeback at Indy 500
Jacques Villeneuve has not competed in the Indy 500 since his 1995 triumph in one of motor sport’s most iconic events but at the age of 42 the Canadian will return to the famous Brickyard for this year’s race.
Villeneuve will drive for the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team and, if he qualifies for the race proper on May 25, he will set a new record for the biggest gap between starts, the 19 years surpassing the old mark of 17, jointly held by Cy Marshall and Roland Free between 1930 and 1947.
Villeneuve went on to claim the 1995 IndyCar season championship before moving to Formula One, claiming the 1997 world title and a total of 11 wins from 34 grand prix starts.
Currently an F1 commentator as well as competing in World Rallycross, Villeneuve said he was excited by the prospect of another chance of Indy 500 glory.
“The memories I have there will stay with me for the rest of my life, and I’m excited to create new memories in 2014.”
Villeneueve will partner the ambitious team’s full-time IndyCar drivers Simon Pagenaud of France and Mikhail Aleshin of Russia for the 500-mile (800 km) race on the 2.5 mile (4km) circuit in Indianapolis.
Team principal Sam Schmidt said the acquisition of Villeneuve underlined their ambition as they enter just their third season in IndyCar.
“We’re very pleased to have a driver of the caliber of Jacques in our lineup in May,” Schmidt said.
“He’s a former winner in the event and brings tremendous experience from his success in the world’s top racing series.”
Co-owner Ric Peterson was in the crowd when Villeneuve won the the Indy 500 in 1995.
Having grown up in Canada, the name Villeneuve is synonymous with winning. and Jacques being the only Canadian to win that huge event, it gave me a huge sense of national pride,” he said.
Villeneuve’s father Gilles won six races during a brief but storied F1 career – until losing his life in an accident at the Belgian Grand Prix in 1982.
His son inherited his flair for motor sport and upon graduating to the IndyCar series in 1994 made an early impression by being named Rookie of the Year.
His 1995 triumphs made him hot property and he was signed by the then dominant Williams team for the 1996 F1 season, finishing runner-up in the title race to teammate Damon Hill of Britain.
The next season came his title success after a titanic battle with Germany’s Michael Schumacher, the seven-time world F1 champion.
It was to prove the pinnacle of his career and after leaving Williams to drive with BAR, Renault and Sauber, Villeneuve switched to NASCAR racing in 2007.
He is one of only two drivers to have competed in IndyCar, NASCAR Sprint Cup and Formula One.
The other, Colombia’s Juan Pablo Montoya is returning to IndyCar for the 2014 season with Team Penske.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to compete in several of the world’s top racing series, and nothing excites me more than entering the IndyCar series at its current level of competitiveness,” Villeneuve said.
Villeneuve’s place in Indy 500 history is already assured after his epic drive to win in 1995. He recovered from a mid-race two-lap penalty to beat Brazilian Christian Fittipaldi by over two seconds.
He is likely to be joined on the start line by three-time winner Helio Castroneves of Brazil, two-time winner Scott Dixon of New Zealand, Montoya, who won in 2000, and Brazil’s Tony Kanaan, the defending champion.
If he was to enter Victory Lane, Villeneuve would break Al Unser’s record for the longest gap between first and last victories. Unser went 17 years between his 1970 and 1987 triumphs.