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There is a really established course of when a fan catches a milestone house run, similar to Shohei Ohtani’s first homer with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The ball legally belongs to the fan, who’s shortly escorted from their seat so crew officers can communicate with them and work out what it is going to take for the fan to half with the ball. Sometimes, all it takes is just a little signed memorabilia; different instances, chilly exhausting money. Crucially, it’s inside the fan’s rights to take the ball and go house.
This follow goes again a long time, however the Dodgers couldn’t avoid pointless drama when it occurred with Ohtani’s homer on Thursday.
The fan who caught Ohtani’s house run ball is a married, lifelong Dodgers fan named Ambar Roman, and he or she and her husband did not sound very joyful whereas talking with The Athletic about how they had been handled by the Dodgers after the house run ball ended up in her palms.
As Roman tells the story, she was escorted from the stands, separated from her husband and pressured into giving up the ball for next-to-nothing. She in the end exchanged the ball for 2 signed hats, a signed ball and a signed bat. An public sale home informed The Athletic that the ball could be value no less than $100,000.
As Roman’s husband, Alexis Valenzuela, put it:
“They really took advantage of her,” Valenzuela stated. “There were a bunch of (security) guys around her. They wouldn’t let me talk to her or give her any advice. There was no way for us to leave. They had her pretty much cornered in the back.”
The Dodgers allegedly threatened to refuse to authenticate the ball if Roman determined to take it house, which might’ve made the ball successfully nugatory and brought away her skill to promote it later. Of course, it additionally would’ve meant the Dodgers having to clarify to their $700 million participant that he wasn’t getting his first Dodgers house run ball as a result of they did not wish to half with, say, just a few thousand {dollars}.
This course of normally ends with the fan assembly the participant, however even that wound up being a degree of rivalry. Roman and Valenzuela informed The Athletic that they by no means met Ohtani, regardless of his claims on the contrary after the sport:
“I was able to talk to the fan, and was able to get it back,” Ohtani stated by means of interpreter Will Ireton. “Obviously it’s a very special ball, a lot of feelings toward it, I’m very grateful that it’s back.”
The Dodgers reportedly declined to handle Roman’s and Valenzuela’s grievances past a press release saying they had been “open to a further conversation.”
Given that Ohtani’s willingness to inform the reality is already a central a part of one of many largest tales of the season, his getting caught in an obvious lie over one thing as trivial as assembly a fan cannot be ignored.
In whole, this was a weird and utterly avoidable story for the Dodgers in a yr after they already had sufficient weird and utterly avoidable tales. It’s additionally an essential reminder for followers to know their rights in the event that they ever catch a significant ball. Teams may threaten to not authenticate the ball, however you need to keep in mind that’s going to price them, too.
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