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The story of how one fan got his hands on a historic home run ball hit by Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani is a wild one. The story of what he had to go through in order to sell it might be even wilder.
During Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, Shohei Ohtani had perhaps the greatest single-game performance in Major League Baseball history. Not only did Ohtani allow no runs and just two hits in six innings on the mound, he struck out 10. In addition to that, at the plate he went 3-3 with a walk and 3 home runs. The second home run was such a bomb that the Dodgers put up a plaque in the center field concourse to commemorate it.
When Shohei Ohtani hit that memorable home run, Dodgers fan Carlo Mendoza was eating some nachos at one of the concession stands in center field. Little did he know he was about to own a piece of baseball history.
He was in the right place at the right time
“He was dumbfounded,” SCP Auctions chief operating officer Mike Keys told The Athletic about what happened to Mendoza. “He’s sitting there at the nacho place. The TV is there. He hears it. He hears the crowd. He looks up, and the ball bounces right there, and he’s going for the ball.
“He scraped up his leg real bad. And in fact, nobody really around him realized what was going on until after he grabbed it. He dove, thinking that there would be a dogpile, and there just wasn’t. … It’s almost like getting a lottery ticket.”
The reason Mike Keys knows this story is because SCP Auctions just put the ball up for sale with a starting bid of $200,000. How the ball ended up there is a whole other story.
Mendoza had to jump through several hoops to sell the ball
Because the baseball that Ohtani hit flew so far, MLB’s official on-site authenticators were unable to see where it landed, let alone who actually came up with it. Instead, Mendoza had the ball stamped by Dodger Stadium staff with the Oct. 17 date on it. He also immediately took photos of himself with the ball.
But that’s not all. SCP Auctions also had Carlos Mendoza write a notarized affidavit and undergo a polygraph test. He passed. And now the historic Shohei Ohtani home run baseball is on the auction block.