For one lucky baseball fan, buying an outfield ticket to an upcoming Los Angeles Dodgers game can prove to be a life-changing purchase. The equivalent of a down payment on a house — depending on the market, of course — can drop out of the sky.
As the Dodgers begin a seven-game trip to Atlanta on Friday night, Shohei Ohtani is on the verge of a feat never before accomplished in Major League Baseball history. The Japanese superstar is now three home runs and two stolen bases away from the sport’s first 50-50 season.
Sports memorabilia experts told Yahoo Sports that the home run ball that cements Ohtani as the first member of baseball’s 50-50 club could be worth six figures to the fan who gets his hands on it. The ball’s value, they say, won’t change whether Ohtani’s 50th home run comes before or after his 50th stolen base.
The 50th home run ball “could fetch more than $200,000” at auction, according to Brahm Wachter, Sotheby’s head of modern collectibles. Chris Ivy, director of sports collectibles at Heritage Auctions, wrote that he conservatively estimated the ball’s value “at a nice round number like $100,000+ and expected it to exceed that amount, probably by many multiples.”
Those numbers reflect Ohtani’s popularity and the rarity of his potential feat. Only five other major leaguers have ever collected 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a single season. Before Ohtani, the closest to the 50-50 mark has been Atlanta’s Ronald Acuña Jr., who hit 41 home runs and stole 73 bases last year.
“It’s never easy to predict the price of a piece at auction without having comparisons, but that’s what makes it the ideal auction piece,” Ivy said. “When it happens, it’s fair to consider it one of the five best single-season performances in baseball history.”
Savvy ballhawks who’ve studied Ohtani’s spray chart already know that most of his 218 career homers have been hit to right or center field. Fans with gloves sitting just above the right- or center-field wall have the best chance of capturing a piece of history.
The secondary ticket market for the Dodgers’ four-game series in Atlanta reflects that fans who want those seats will have to pay a premium. The StubHub or SeatGeek list price for tickets above the right-field wall at Atlanta’s Truist Park is often several hundred dollars. Comparable or better seats in foul territory are priced much less.
History underscores the potential for chaos in the outfield stands when ownership of a coveted home run ball is on the line. Two years ago, the scramble for Aaron Judge’s 60th home run ball sent a mountain of grown men scrambling to get it off the ground. And then there’s Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 73rd home run ball in a single season in 2001, the ball that infamously resulted in a lawsuit between the fan who caught it first and the one who retrieved it later after the first fan was immediately tackled and dropped.
A California court eventually ruled that Alex Popov and Patrick Hayashi had a legal right to the ball and that the best solution was to split the proceeds equally. The ball, once estimated to be worth more than $1 million, sold in 2003 for a bargain $450,000.
When asked by Yahoo Sports whether the Braves or Marlins plan to add extra security in the stands or take other precautions as Ohtani approaches the 50-50 tie, spokespeople for both teams declined to comment.
In recent years, several fans have chosen to part with the precious mementos they’ve recovered. The college student who emerged from the scrum with Judge’s 60th career home run ball returned the ball to the Yankees slugger in exchange for a clubhouse meet-and-greet and some autographed memorabilia. A Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan made a similar decision to return a piece of history in October 2021 after Mike Evans thoughtlessly threw Tom Brady’s 600th career touchdown pass.
As expected, not every fan is so generous. A Dodgers fan turned down Albert Pujols’ request to return his 700th home run ball in 2022, later selling it at auction for $360,000. That same year, a Dallas man who caught Judge’s 62nd home run ball auctioned it off for $1.5 million.
The walk-off grand slam that secured Ohtani’s spot in the 40-40 club last month could have earned Tony Voda a six-figure return if the Dodgers fan hadn’t dropped the ball. Another fan nudged Voda as he raised his left hand to catch the ball, causing it to deflect off the brim of his rainbow-colored glove and bounce back onto the field.
A heartbroken Voda immediately put his hands on his head as outfielder Jose Siri picked up the ball and threw it to another spot in the stands. Afterwards, in a short YouTube video Voda posted, he lamented that he was “inches away from history.”
