What a difference a ball makes! If you had been lucky enough to catch Barry Bond’s record breaking #756 ball – the one that broke Hank Aaron’s old all time home run record – it would have been like catching a quarter of a million dollars.
Yes, it is true. The owner of the ball, lucky New York tourist Matt Murphy, caught the ball last month. The 22-year-old was then escorted away from the crowd by police for security purposes. I find it a bit fitting that, due to all the controversy over Bonds and the record being broken, Murphy was wearing a New York Mets shirt when he caught the famous ball. And talk about being in the right place at the right time! Murphy had stopped in San Francisco with a friend as they were on their way to Australia. He almost missed even being in the stands when the home run was hit! The two had left their seats to get food right before the home run (another testament to Bond’s living legacy – not!).
Murphy decided to put the ball up for auction through SCP Auctions, Inc., which sells sports memorabilia in conjunction with Sotheby’s. Several auction houses had estimated that the ball might sell for as much as $500,000. The opening bid for the online auction on August 28th was $100,000. It languished around $300,000 (still big money to me!), but picked up right before the auction ended. After 31 bids, the ball was won on Saturday by an unidentified bidder for $752,467.20.
Now, if you had caught another Bond’s home run ball, you would have still been in the money, just not quite as much. When he set the single season home run record of 73 in 2001, the ball was sold for $450,000. The ball with which he tied the Aaron record (at 755) was sold Saturday night in a parallel auction. Adam Hughes, a 33-year-old La Jolla, California man who caught that ball, got $186,750 for that baseball.