OK, but isn't it odd that you don't have a competing theory, or that no other competing theory has been presented?
Not even a little odd. It is not necessary to have an alternate explanation to be skeptical about a belief, or even conclusions drawn from facts.
Initial question/observation: cats eat, I wonder why?
Prediction: cats will eat when they are hungry.
Hypothesis: cats attempt to obtain food at times when their body metabolism is in need of caloric input.
Null: cats eat at any time for no particular reason.
Experimental design: dunno, not a cat behavoirist
Collect data: (cats eat when hungry, and eat when they are bored)
Analyze data: (simple ANOVA?) cats eat more often when hungry, but the variance is not significant (p>0.05)
Present conclusions: Cats do eat when they are hungry, but we fail to reject the null hypothesis.
In this case, what everyone believes is actually ambiguous. The point is that we cannot know until we know, and that there's a difference between believing a thing to be so, and knowing it is so.
Running way afield here lol!
A response from tOSU:
"Hi Ray, I received your question from Tyler. Typically the team is allotted a certain number of game balls per game/series. In order to keep the game rolling along and avoid not having any balls to use in the field of play, we collect all of the foul ball as well as home run balls. It is common practice at most college softball and baseball games."
I followed up by asking if it's a money/budget issue, as well as to suggest offering a trinket to the little ones to encourage the practice. I doubt I'll get a response, but will post it if I do. From the above response, money does not appear to be the sole motivating factor.