DALLAS -- The engaged couple that has been vilified for snatching away a baseball intended for a toddler at Wednesday's Rangers-Yankees game say they have been treated unfairly. Now they want an apology from the Yankees broadcaster whose comments helped make the video of the episode go viral.
"My fiance Shannon and I were honestly unaware of the situation of the little boy sitting next to us," Sean Leonard wrote in a statement posted by WFAA Dallas-Ft. Worth. "We were so caught up in the excited and moment of being at our first Ranger's baseball game together."
The first to cry foul was Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, who said on air, "Oh, my God, they can't give it to the kid?"
An onslaught of media and social media criticism followed.
"It's very hurtful, especially when you know you wouldn't intentionally hurt somebody or hurt their feelings," said Leonard's fiance Shannon Moore. The two tie the knot this Saturday. "Especially when it's a little-bitty toddler."
That toddler was 3-year-old Cameron Shores, and even his parents said they felt sorry for the couple who caught the ball.
"They were made out to be such horrible, cold-hearted people, and I didn't get that impression from them at all," Cameron's mother Crystal Shores said on the TODAY show Friday. "They were very sweet and they talked to Cameron a lot."
She said they even offered Cameron the ball when they realized he was upset, but the Shores turned it down.
"I never once thought that they should have given him the ball," Cameron's mom said. "We're trying to teach him he doesn't get everything every time."
Cameron still wound up getting a baseball. Someone threw him a ball from the dugout after hearing what happened.
(USA Today and NBC News contributed to this report.)