A Cherry Hill family is fighting the school district over foul baseballs landing in their backyard

After saving for years, Guy and Mirit Holzman moved into their dream home last year behind Cherry Hill High School East.

A few months later, the school’s 2024 spring baseball season began and errant balls began landing in their fenced-in backyard. Players would retrieve the balls or the couple would toss them back.

Then, a ball landed on their car parked in the driveway, breaking the windshield. A final straw, Mirit Holzman said, came when she was struck in the shoulder by a ball while holding her 1-year-old son, Ari, in her arms. The boy was hit in the neck but not seriously injured.

She stormed toward the baseball field, demanding that officials stop the game. Angry fans told her to leave and school officials said she was trespassing.

Some parents yelled that she should remain indoors during practice and games, she said. Others blamed the couple for purchasing a home in such close proximity to the baseball field.

Since then, the couple have become embroiled in a battle with the district as they search for a way to protect them and their property from fly balls. Guy Holzman said his next step may be legal action to halt the season until the matter is resolved.

“We really tried to play ball, but it’s becoming ridiculous,” said Guy Holzman, a lawyer and an accountant. “I will get an injunction until we figure it out.”

Superintendent Kwame Morton and district officials did not respond to requests for comment. But email exchanges between the couple and the district obtained by The Inquirer under the state’s Open Public Records Act suggest a growing acrimony.

The couple want the district to reimburse them $300 for the damaged windshield and repairs to their fence damaged by baseballs. They also want the district to move the field about 30 feet to change the trajectory of balls.

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In one heated exchange, athletic director Michael Beirao said the baseball fields were installed in the 1970s, long before the couple purchased the home. He likened it to living next to a golf course.

“You bought a home next to a high school baseball field,” Beirao wrote. “Although we try to ensure we are good neighbors, there are going to be times when a baseball errantly flies into your yard.”

Said Mirit Holzman: “It doesn’t matter that the baseball field was there first. How can that make it OK?”

In another email, Beirao warned the couple not to enter the field again, as Mirit Holzman had after she and her son were hit, or they would face trespassing and disorderly persons charges.

“This behavior is unacceptable and must not happen again,” he wrote.

Beirao said there had been no complaints from other residents in the Cherry Hill neighborhood, where homes abut the field. During a recent visit, Guy Holzman pointed to balls that landed in neighbors’ yards.

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The Holzmans purchased their home in the township’s Wilderness Run neighborhood in December 2023 for $880,000, records show. They moved in a month later with their three young children.

The couple, both 44, met in Israel and moved to the United States in 2018. They said they spent years saving for a down payment.

They said they didn’t pay attention to the baseball field adjacent to the backyard when they bought the house. When baseball practice began a few months later, balls began landing in the yard, they said.

Mirit Holzman, an Amazon executive, said she was unfamiliar with America’s pastime because baseball is not popular in Israel.

During the 2024 season, the couple said, they primarily kept their children indoors when the team was playing. Players would enter the yard without permission, and urinated on the property, they said. Guy Holzman began contacting the district, hoping to reach a resolution before the next season. The couple filed two police reports.

“I have no intention to continue to close my kids at home. They are not prisoners,” Guy Holzman wrote to district officials. “I do not feel safe for my family.”

Beirao told the couple in an email that the district would not reimburse them for the car windshield damage and suggested they file a claim with their homeowners insurance.

The district made some concessions, agreeing to tell players not to enter the Holzmans’ yard to retrieve balls. This year, it added a batting turtle, a portable batting cage that catches missed pitches and foul balls, which can be used during practice but not games.

Guy Holzman says most of the problems occur during games, when players hit harder. He wants the district to do more, such as adding a row of canopy trees to serve as a cushion to intercept fly balls. He had recommended the school install netting that would have cost $60,000 but has backed down from that request.

The couple has rejected suggestions that they sell their five bedroom, five-bath 5,000-square-foot home built in the 1980s. And Guy Holzman, a sports enthusiast and former Israeli gymnastics champion, doesn’t want to be a spoilsport and ruin baseball season.

“I don’t want to hurt the kids. I want them to have fun. I want them to play,” he said. “There’s no need for it to be at [the expense of] the safety of my family.”

Meanwhile, this year’s baseball season is underway. The next home game is April 21 vs. Lenape High School.