A dog made his owner’s day by fetching a baseball that flew into the stands in a spring training game on Saturday involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Kansas City Royals.
Dodgers prospect Michael Busch batted a ball over the fence in the seventh inning for his second homer of the spring and, as usual, fans scrambled to retrieve the ball like they often do during regular-season and postseason games.
However, a cunning canine grabbed the ball instead and quickly rushed back to its owner before anyone could stop it.
Then, the dog’s owner, wearing a Dodgers-K9 jersey, got up and showed the ball to the crowd and cameras, much to the delight of fans.
Although one Dodgers fan wearing a Trea Turner jersey seemed to have been baffled with the flying ball’s outcome, raising his arms in disbelief that the dog managed to retrieve the piece of sports memorabilia before he did.
WHERE’D THE BALL GO: A homer in the seventh inning of Saturday’s Dodgers-Royals spring game ended in unusual fashion
Dodgers fan wearing a K-9 fan made sure to recognize his dog’s efforts by showing that his pet caught the baseball to cameras, much to the delight of fans who were at the game
An authenticated ball (one sold by MLB) can be sold anywhere from $30 (foul ball, pitch in the dirt, etc.) to thousands of dollars (say, a Albert Pujols HR).
A ball which a fan catches him or herself in the stands, no matter who hit it, and whatever the outcome is – is probably near worthless, most of the time, though there are a few exceptions.
That’s because there’s no way for a fan to prove that the ball that he or she is selling is actually what they are claiming to offer for sale, unless approached by the league or team postgame.
In case you’re wondering, the most expensive ball in baseball history is still Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball from 1998, which sold for $3.05million.
The baseball that New York Yankees star Aaron Judge hit for his American League record-setting 62nd home run of the 2022 season, sold for $1.5million in December.
