and further asserts that the ball is a piece of “Americana.”

...sort of like frivolous lawsuits.

What are the legal or ethical limits of acceptable ball-seeking acts ? At a KU basketball charity event game against highschoolers held at a high school recently, my wife saw a boy about 10 yrs old repeatedly hit a girl about the same age and was able to wrestle away a KU jersey the girl had caught that had been thrown into the crowd. The mother of the boy saw it, my wife thought she would take care of it, but she did not. My wife normally would intervene, but didn't realize in time that the mother wasn't going to give the jersey back. No one else did anything.

The scrum for the ball and the violence that ensues, especially with children present, IMO is not something that we should just accept as part of the game.

As to frivolity of the lawsuit, if the fan really was attacked, is that acceptable, legally or morally? That's a different issue than rightful ownership of the baseball, and I don't think a frivolous one.