An 18-year-old baseball fan has filed a legal claim asserting he is the rightful owner of Shohei Ohtani’s historic 50-50 home run ball after it was listed for auction.
Ohtani, a superstar for the Los Angeles Dodgers, made baseball history last Thursday by becoming the first player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season. He reached this milestone during the seventh inning of the Dodgers’ 20-4 victory against the Miami Marlins.
The day after the game, the Goldin auction house received a communication from an anonymous fan, leading to the ball being listed for auction with a starting bid of $500,000 (£375,000) and a private purchase option set at $4.5 million (£3.4 million).
In his legal claim filed on Wednesday in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Court, Max Matus contends he caught the ball from Ohtani’s 50th home run, only to have another fan wrest it from him. Matus claims that a man named Chris Belanski “wrapped his legs around Max’s arm and used his hands to wrangle the ball out of Max’s hand, stealing the ball for himself.”
The legal action names the auction house, Belanski, and Kelvin Ramirez, who attended the game with Belanski, as defendants. Matus’s filing includes photographs taken by other fans that he believes support his ownership claim, including one that depicts Belanski displaying the ball in front of a visibly stunned Matus.
Goldin told ESPN they would continue with the auction after reviewing Matus’s claims. The legal filing states, “Max has suffered irreparable harm because of the nature of the unique, irreplaceable 50-50 ball. There is no adequate remedy at law that can replace this unique and extraordinary 50-50 ball.”
