You could buy a baseball associated with greatness: the ball Shohei Ohtani hit for the 50th home run of his unprecedented 50-50 season, or the ball Freddie Freeman hit for the first walk-off grand slam in postseason history.
Or you could buy a baseball associated with failure: the ball two-time most valuable player Aaron Judge dropped in the fateful fifth inning, on the night the Dodgers clinched the World Series championship.
The Ohtani ball sold for $4.4 million. The Freeman ball is up for auction through Saturday; the high bid as of Monday afternoon was $500,000.
Read more: ‘A Shohei economy’: How Shohei Ohtani’s first year transformed the Dodgers financially
The sellers for those baseballs: the fans that caught them. The seller for this baseball: Major League Baseball itself, offering an assortment of authenticated memorabilia from the 2024 World Series through its MLB Auctions program.
In Game 5 of the World Series, the Dodgers trailed 5-0 entering the fifth inning. After Kiké Hernández singled to lead off the inning, Tommy Edman hit a routine fly ball to center field. Judge slowed up to catch the ball but then dropped it.
The Dodgers proceeded to load the bases with none out, but the next two batters struck out. If Judge had caught that ball, the Yankees would have been out of the inning with the shutout intact. Instead, the Dodgers rallied to tie the score, en route to a 7-6 victory.
The ball, listed for auction as “Dropped Fly Ball by Aaron Judge,” had attracted 64 bids as of 5 p.m. PST Monday, with a top bid of $12,050. The auction closes Thursday.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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