During a game at Sutter Health Park on Monday night, a drone suddenly appeared near the left-field wall, causing a brief disruption. Veteran Athletics bat boy Stewart Thalblum sprang into action to handle the unexpected situation.
The drone attempted to lift him off the grass, but Thalblum, 22, stayed calm and used a bat to bring it down safely, being careful not to injure himself with the spinning blades. After securing the device, he handed it over to a security guard.
The drone made its surprise entrance while Seth Brown was batting for the Athletics in the seventh inning, delaying the game for a few minutes. Thalblum, who has been a bat boy for six years, explained his quick response: “I didn’t want to cut my fingers off. I’ve seen stories where people get hurt when their hands get caught in drones, so I tried to catch it by the bottom. It was right there, so I grabbed it and started hitting its wings with the bat to stop it from flying away. I wanted to get it behind the wall, but we couldn’t figure out what to do with it, and it kept trying to fly off.”
Stewart Thalblum, a veteran Athletics bat boy, is the son of Mikey Thalblum, who has served as the A’s visiting clubhouse manager for years. During Monday night’s game at Sutter Health Park, Stewart’s quick thinking with an unexpected intruder—an airborne drone—caught the attention of many, including Cubs manager Craig Counsell.
When some Chicago players spotted the drone, Counsell alerted plate umpire Adrian Johnson, who hadn’t noticed it yet. Counsell remarked, “I guess that’s the world we’re in right now. But it was funny because it looked like the drone was trying to fly away—it was trying to fly Mikey’s son away, too. It’s life in 2025.”
Stewart had noticed the drone during the previous at-bat, marking it as his first encounter with such an incident. When he saw Johnson halt the game, he decided to take action. “Everybody was just looking at it for a little while, and I’ve never had something like that happen,” Thalblum said. “I was asking around, and nobody from security had gone out there, so I was like, ‘I don’t know whose responsibility this is, so maybe it’s mine.’”
His father couldn’t have been prouder—though not just for the drone incident. “I’m proud of him for a lot of other reasons, more so than getting a drone—just for being a good kid,” Mikey Thalblum said, chuckling. “He’s a good clubbie.”
