The baseball Los Angeles Dodgers star Freddie Freeman hit for the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history is coming to auction.
The "December Dynasty Auction" from SCP Auctions could make the family of the 10-year-old boy who retrieved Freeman's historic baseball quite wealthy overnight. The auction will run from Dec. 4 to Dec. 14.
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The father of Zachary Ruderman, the lucky fifth grader who was in the right place at the right time in Dodger Stadium on Oct. 25, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about their life since that night.
"It's a lot more attention than my son has ever had," Nico Ruderman told the Times. "He's spoken to so many media outlets, so many interviews. People recognize him. I mean, literally everywhere we go people stop him and want to take pictures with him. He's really actually been loving it. It's been a fun experience for him."
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As a timely comparison, the baseball Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani hit for his historic 50th home run of the season sold for $4.392 million at an auction in October. SCP said that Ohtani's auction makes Freeman's ball "easily worth seven figures."
Like Ohtani's home run, which made him the first player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season, Freeman's home run represented a singular event in baseball history. No player had ever ended a World Series game with a grand slam before Freeman's 10th-inning home run off Nestor Cortes lifted the Dodgers to a 6-3 victory over the New York Yankees en route to the championship.
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Freeman, playing on a sprained right ankle and a rib cartilage fracture, hit home runs in four straight World Series games to collect the World Series MVP award. None was bigger than the Game 1 walkoff that many compared to Kirk Gibson's home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series.
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When Freeman's home run ball landed, according to the Times, it rolled next to Zachary Ruderman's feet. He then batted it over to his father, who pounced on it, stood up, and handed the ball back to his son.
Now, the family will wait and see how the market values their little piece of baseball history.
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