Keep it or throw it back? That's the question for fans who catch an opponent's home run ball

"Throw it back! Throw it back!”

The chant at Yankee Stadium begins seconds after a home run ball hit by an opposing player ends up in a fan’s hands.

“Throw it back! Throw it back!”

As the chant grows louder and more intense, the fan has to make a split-second decision: Do I risk the wrath of my fellow Yankees fans by keeping the souvenir — one I may have caught in one of the greatest athletic achievements of my life, or had to wrestle away at great bodily peril from a group of equally ball-hungry fans — or do I throw it back onto the field?

At Yankee Stadium — for reasons that are not clear but appear to be etched in stone — you absolutely throw it back.

“There was not one ounce of thought in me to keep that ball,” said Los Angeles Angels catcher and Sayville product Logan O’Hoppe, who as a 17-year-old in 2018 caught a home run ball in leftfield hit by potential future Hall of Famer Manny Machado off Class of 2025 Hall of Famer CC Sabathia. “That’s been ingrained in me since I was a little kid. It was more of a habitual thing than it was a conscious act.”

No thought of keeping it?

“No way. No way,” O’Hoppe told Newsday earlier this week in the visiting dugout at Yankee Stadium. “I was convicted in it, and I’m convicted in my choice now. I don’t regret a second of it.”

“You throw that ball back,” said WFAN radio host and unabashed Yankees fan Keith McPherson, who in 2015 caught a home run hit by Houston’s Colby Rasmus off Masahiro Tanaka in the AL Wild Card playoff game and threw it back. “I know the code. Being a Bleacher Creature, sitting in the bleachers, you ‘throw it back, throw it back.’ And if you’re watching the game at home, you want that ball to look like it got spit out back onto the field.

“If you don’t send that ball back while everybody’s yelling ‘throw it back, throw it back, throw it back,’ you’re going to get booed. You’re going to get heckled by your own fans. But if you do throw it back in a timely manner, you’re a hero, and it plays into the whole aesthetic of the stadium. We don’t want that home run. We don’t want that keepsake.”

Throwing a visiting home run ball back as a tradition started in the late 1960s at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs. When and why did it start at Yankee Stadium? It’s not clear.

Michael Kay, the Yankees play-by-play man on YES Network, said: “I don't remember it as a kid. I mean, I sat in the last row of the upper deck behind home plate, so [a home run ball] was a rumor.”

Aaron Judge, the longest-tenured Yankee who debuted in 2016, said: “It’s always been like that. I remember — I just go back to my rookie year. They were always throwing ’em back, and my main concern is to make sure you don’t get hit by them. Make sure you’re on the lookout. But I love it. I love it. It’s a great, great little tradition. It’s just the fans having some fun, just showing their support, that we don’t want it.”

You might be surprised to learn that the practice is not prohibited by the Yankees — with a few caveats.

According to Yankees spokesman Jason Zillo, fans can throw an opposing home run ball back onto the field as long as it’s done “immediately, safely and not in the direction of a player.”

Hemming and hawing on whether to keep it or throw it back will not only earn you the enmity of other fans in your section — any maybe a few peanuts or Cracker Jacks thrown your way — it could get you ejected if you do it after too much time has elapsed or if the toss lands too close to a player, Zillo said.

There was a recent case when a fan did not throw it back. On June 6, a young Yankees fan later identified only as Jesse from Manhattan caught on the fly the first big-league home run by Boston Red Sox rookie Marcelo Mayer.

Perhaps recognizing the significance of the clout, Jesse did not throw it back. Perhaps because he was a kid, fans in the rightfield lower deck did not give him too hard a time. And Jesse was later rewarded when he returned the ball to Mayer in exchange for an autographed bat and ball.

So there are exceptions. As even the diehardest of the diehards McPherson said, “Now, if it’s a [Shohei] Ohtani ball . . . ”

Still, a lot of fans can’t imagine throwing back any home run ball hit by any player.

“I would keep it,” said Bill Nylan of Bohemia. “Throw it back in, and I’m losing a ball. I think by throwing a ball back, who are you helping? The Yankees are just going to take it and throw it back into a pile. I would rather keep the ball, bring it home and take it to my kids.”

Robert Cicale of East Islip wrote in an email: “I have often considered what I would do. Were I to sit in home run seats, I'd likely have a cheap Little League baseball in my pocket to throw back and keep the MLB souvenir.”

Kay, when told of that idea, said: “I like that thinking.”

Said Kay: “I've always found it somewhat curious. It's hard to get a home run ball, hard to catch it. And if you catch it, I mean, I can't even imagine the internal struggle for you to throw the ball back. I don't know what I would do. I mean, I wouldn't want to be booed. I'm sensitive. But there would be a part of me that’s like, ‘I'm keeping this. I'm not throwing it back.’ But, again, nobody wants to get booed, and peer pressure goes a long way.”

Yankees fan Josh Hechtman of Long Beach said: “I’m throwing it all the way back to home plate . . . Unless it’s a ball maybe worth a million dollars. Then I’m keeping it.”

Mets fans are probably by this point wondering, ‘What about us? Doesn’t this happen at Citi Field, too?”

The answer is, yes, it does, but not with the same regularity and with the same expectation as at Yankee Stadium.

And, perhaps the biggest difference: The Mets try to prohibit it. If an opponent’s home run ball is hurled back onto the field in Flushing, the Mets will make an announcement on the public address system reminding fans that the practice is not allowed, and that you could get tossed for your toss.

“Any object thrown on the field could lead to a fan getting ejected from the stadium,” team spokesman Ethan Wilson said.

Still, opposing home run balls do end up back on the field at Citi Field.

“Honestly, it's been a thing since I've been here,” said Brandon Nimmo, the longest-tenured Mets player, who, like Judge, debuted in 2016. “Just don't hit me. That's all I ask.

“But honestly, if I were them, I would keep the souvenir. If I were them, that's a $25 ball or whatever, and then you had it being a home run on top of that. It’s priceless, right? To be able to say, ‘Hey, I caught this ball at Citi Field. It was a home run.’ For me, that's priceless, and it's really low odds that you would catch that ball, right? So I take it as, you probably need to go buy a lottery ticket.”

Said longtime Mets radio broadcaster Howie Rose: “There’s no chance — that ball is going straight in my pocket, and I might have had to absorb some blows in the head just to get that ball, right? Because there's always a mass scramble. So, no, my orientation would have been to protect that ball at all costs whoever hit it. That was a Major League baseball.

“I don't get it. But I'm of a different orientation. I'm older, and I guess you know, the standards sort of change for what's acceptable parochial or partisan behavior.”

Do they change that much? You’d have to say yes.

The last word on this goes to Arthur Molins, a Mets fan from Manhasset, who wrote in an email: “As an 11-year-old in the late '60s I caught a Richie Allen home run in the leftfield stands [at Shea Stadium]. Although I despised the Phillies — still do — and did not particularly like Richie Allen, I was thrilled to have caught a Major League baseball and a home run from an All-Star player. The ball took a fortuitous bounce in my direction and I did not have to wrestle others for it. I literally jumped up and down upon making the catch . . .  and stared at the ball for innings. There was no pressure from the crowd to throw it back — that was not in vogue at the time — and I stuck it in my pocket and took it home. Many fans congratulated me on grabbing the homer!”

What a story! What a souvenir! Throwing it back wasn’t a thought.

So does Molins still have the ball?

“Regrettably,” he wrote, “as an 11-year-old knucklehead I recall using it in a game and it's long gone. I brought it with me to a game to show it off . . . And Richie Allen is now a Hall of Famer.

“Easy come, easy go.”

Newsday's Carissa Kellman contributed to this story.