For some lucky baseball fan, buying an outfield ticket to an upcoming Los Angeles Dodgers game could turn out to be a life-altering purchase. The equivalent of a housing down payment — dependent on the market, of course — could come hurtling out of the sky.
As the Dodgers begin a seven-game road trip in Atlanta on Friday, Shohei Ohtani is on the precipice of a feat never accomplished before in Major League Baseball history The Japanese superstar is now three home runs and two stolen bases shy of producing the sport’s first 50-50 season.
Sports memorabilia experts told Yahoo Sports that the home run ball that cements Ohtani as the inaugural member of baseball’s 50-50 club could be worth six figures to the fan who snares it. The value of the ball won’t change, they say, whether Ohtani’s 50th home run comes before or after his 50th stolen base.
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The 50th home run ball “could fetch upwards of $200,000” at auction, according to Brahm Wachter, head of modern collectables at Sotheby’s. Chris Ivy, director of sports collectibles at Heritage Auctions, wrote that he’d conservatively estimate the ball’s value “at a nice round number like $100,000+ and expect it to storm past that figure, likely by multiples.”
Those numbers reflect the popularity of Ohtani and the rarity of his potential achievement. Only five other major leaguers have ever amassed 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a single season. Before Ohtani, the closest anyone had come to the 50-50 milestone was Atlanta’s Ronald Acuña Jr., who last year slugged 41 home runs and swiped 73 bases.
“It’s never easy to predict the price at auction of a piece without any comps to consider, but that’s also what makes it the ideal auction piece,” Ivy said. “If it happens, it will be fair to consider it among the top five greatest single-season achievements in baseball history.”
Savvy ballhawks who have studied Ohtani’s spray chart already know that he has hit most of his 218 career home runs to right or center field. Glove-toting fans seated just above the right- or center-field wall will have the best odds of snagging 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 this weekend is often several hundred dollars….