Baseball is the only major sport that sees fan interference affect the outcome of important games, because of how close fans are to the field of play.
With the most famous incident being Steve Bartman’s interference during a Chicago Cubs playoff game in 2023, the MLB has a tumultuous history with fans changing the outcome of a ball in play.
The most recent incident of fan interference came on Monday June 30, 2025, when an Arizona Diamondbacks fan interfered with a fly ball hit by San Francisco Giants infielder Christian Koss.
The fan stretched from his seat to catch the fly ball in his front-row, left-center field seat before his momentum nearly carried him over the outfield wall.
The play was initially ruled an out before review showed that the fan did not directly interfere with the Diamondbacks outfielder and caught the ball behind the outfielder’s glove, and the ruling was changed to an automatic double.
The moment was frustrating for everyone involved on its own. But a postgame revelation on social media made matters even worse.
The Same Fan Has Been Involved in FIVE Separate Fan Interference Incidents
In the aftermath of the incident, internet sleuths revealed that the very same fan who interfered with the Christian Koss fly ball repeatedly sits in that same seat, and has interfered with fly balls five other times.
The first incident was actually against the Giants on July 6, 2022. Joey Bart hit a deep fly ball that the same fan reached over and snagged. The umpires initially called Bart’s hit a home run but overturned the play and ruled it a double after review.
The fan had similar instances in 2023 against the Washington Nationals and Arizona Cardinals, 2024 against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and now 2025 against the Giants again.
Interestingly enough, each time the Diamondbacks player hit the fly ball, the umpires upheld the call and ruled the play a home run. But the two times an opponent was at the plate, they overturned the call and ruled it a double.
Diamondbacks manager Torey Luvullo also praised a different fan for interfering with a play back in 2023, which has come back into focus after the latest incident.
How Did The Call Affect The Game?
Many Giants fans and media members believe that if the fan never interfered with the play, the ball would have been headed over the fence regardless.
Replay clearly shows that the ball traveled over and past the glove of Diamondbacks outfielder Tim Tawa, and from some angles, it looks like the ball would have scraped over the left-center field wall or bounced off the top of the wall and over the fence.
But the fan’s momentum carried him so far over the wall it made the play appear to be a more egregious interference than it actually was, leading the umpires to initially call Koss out.
If ruled a home run, Koss’s hit would have tied the game at 3-3. Instead, the Giants pinch-ran Brett Wisely for Koss and the Giants couldn’t knock Wisely in. San Francisco went on to lose the game 4-2.
No one will ever know what would have happened if the fan let the ball go, and no one knows what would have happened in any of the other incidents either. Umpires can only make their best guess.
So the question remains, why aren’t the Diamondbacks more critical of fans that interfere with baseball games? Why don’t they serve those fans a much bigger punishment? And why does every incident with this fan seem to go the DBacks’ way?
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Diamondbacks Getting Backlash, Calls To Ban Fan After Incident appeared first on Heavy Sports.