A young Cubs fan threw back Wilmer Flores' home run ball … or did he?

It's well-known at the Friendly Confines that, should you catch a home run ball hit by the opposing team, you must throw it back. One young Cubs fan at Monday's 5-1 win over the Mets knew that edict, so when he caught Wilmer Flores' seventh-inning moonshot, he tossed it back from whence it came:

… Or did he? Let's take a closer look at what happened. As you can see in the video above, our intrepid young hero made a great catch, pulled back his arm to throw the ball from whence it came, but then he was stopped. After some rummaging around, he got a ball and threw it onto the field:  

Now, maybe this kid's friends and family just wanted to write a note on the ball. Who knows, maybe they want to be pen pals with Flores and were just jotting their address on the only thing they could reasonably throw to him. But, in case that's not true (and come on, who still writes letters?), it seems like this crafty group of Cubbies fans swapped out one baseball with another and got a pretty sweet souvenir while still upholding Wrigley Field tradition.