If MLB Teams Had An Ounce Of Brains, They'd Put Minor League Players In The Crowd To Catch Historic Home Run Balls
I'm not a huge memorabilia guy so I've never really understood the market behind it. With that being said, I know there are hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line for certain items. Hell, millions even after Mark McWire's 70th home run ball in 1998 was sold for $3 million.
We see it happen all the time. A player hits a historic home run. A fan catches the ball. The team then offers them some sort of bullshit compensation package for the ball like a pair of tickets to a day game and a hat autographed by the mascot. The fan either has to be a coward and accept the offer, or they have to risk being blacklisted by the team for not giving up the ball. After Shohei Ohtani became the first player in MLB history last night to steal 50 bases and hit 50 homers, the fan who caught the ball opted to take it home with him.
Good for him. I mean, assuming it's a "him" considering he caught the ball. But good for that fan. Sure, he might run into some issues selling the ball without getting it authenticated by the league. But with the amount that he'll end up making off of it, I'm pretty sure he'll be able to afford a decent lawyer to help him out.
Now obviously the big losers here are the Dodgers. That's a piece of Dodgers history and a part of MLB history that they simply have no legal way of getting back from that fan other than outbidding everyone else for it.
There's nothing I hate more than when people see a clear problem without coming up with some sort of solution. So allow me to solve this problem for all the MLB teams out there who are potentially losing out on millions of dollars by not getting milestone home run balls back into their possession:
Just bring your whole minor league team to each game as a milestone is approaching, and sprinkle them throughout the outfield. I mean if Zack Hample can seemingly cover an entire ballpark by himself, I think you should be able to rely on a bunch of pro baseball players to get a read on the ball and beat out a couple hundred drunk fans to make the catch. People always talk about how underpaid minor league baseball players are right now, so you can pay the players overtime for being at the game and then offer a big bonus to whoever catches the ball.
The only way to make it fair, though, is that they have to be in uniform. You can't have these guys being undercover. That way there can be a clear fans vs the pros thing going on in the outfield. Maybe see if the fans can work together to box out the pro from getting to the ball. Will they work as a team, or all as a bunch of individuals? Time will tell, I suppose.
P.S. - One of my favorite bits of Philly sports lore is that the reason why fans are allowed to keep balls hit into the crowd in the first place is because of Philadelphia. In 1922 there was an 11-year-old kid named Robert Cotter who snuck into a Phillies game and caught a foul ball. When he refused to give the ball back, the team had him arrested and threw this kid in jail over night. Once everyone realized how ridiculous that entire situation was, a legal decision was made to let fans keep foul balls.
