Alex Avila hit his first big league homer with the Tigers this year. He didn’t expect to see it again but when he got back to the locker room it was there with his things.
I have no problem with a fan asking for hard cash, and lots of it.
With today’s wealthy professional players, he can afford it.
Good article in the WSJ this summer about so-called “ball hawks.” A couple weeks later a very nice letter to the editor appeared by the son of a former player (Dick Hall (?)). He said that a carpenter or some tradesman caught his dad’s first homer. The carpenter and his friends built a beautiful wood display case for the ball and returned to a later game and presented it to the player during batting practice.
The letter said that this was his father’s most treasured momento from his career, which included winning the world series.
The fan can’t prove the ball he’s holding is the ball in question. Its hard to prove now, and will even be harder a few months or years down the line.
And even if it is, what makes a used baseball worth $10000?
Maybe that “jerk” has to work 500 hours or more to earn $10,000. How long does it take the ball player to earn $10k? The guy caught the ball and it’s his to do with as he pleases.
How much money do those guys make? Hell yea, I asking a BUNDLE for the ball. Supply and demand, whatever the market will bare....
Uhm, there was also a time when the crappiest player on the team didn’t make 20 times what the average family of 4 makes in the same time.
He should have turned it over to Carson and said congratulations.......
A bunch of years ago a friend of mine was on a business trip in California and took in a ball game. He was seated at the left field wall in fair territory when Moises Alou hit a ground rule double which bounced over the wall right into my friend's lap.
Ironically enough, the team was staying at my friend's hotel so Ted took the ball down to the desk clerk and asked him to ask Alou to sign it when he came back to the hotel.
About 11:00 that night there was a knock on Ted's door and it was Alou personally returning the signed baseball. He then stayed for about an hour talking with my buddy over a beer about baseball and his dad, Felipe Alou........pretty cool.
Not sure what "era" you grew up in. I saw my first major league game in 1951 and went to games pretty regularly until the mid-70s when I sometimes did work for a couple of the teams.
I never got a game ball. It took me a very long time before I got a batting practice ball, and even that was tainted. (I was working up in the Montreal Olympic Stadium, walking from one place to another. There was hardly anyone there. Some guy hit a ball into the section I was passing. I just calmly walked over and picked the ball up. I still have it.) Back when I took my kids to a few games I even wondered if I had been able to snag a ball whether I would have given it to one of them. (Probably not! I would have justified this as preventing the unhappiness of the one who didn't get the ball!) The thought of giving up such a prize to some stranger whose parents were wearing diapers when I was in high school and who might be playing in the Minors in two months is quite difficult to comprehend.
ML/NJ