Ownership of Historic Shohei Ohtani Home Run Ball in Dispute, Lawsuit Filed over ‘Forcefully’ Taken Item

Shohei Ohtani’s record-breaking home-run ball which created the 50/50 club — 50 home runs, 50 stolen bases in a season — was one for the ages. Now, it’s potentially one for the courts.

According to ESPN, 18-year-old Max Matus filed a suit Thursday in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Court looking to prevent bidding to open on the record-breaking ball, which was set to begin on Friday.

In the suit, Matus claimed that another man “wrongfully and forcefully” took the ball from him in the stands at LoanDepot Park in Miami, Florida, and that the man and an accomplice have announced their plans to sell the ball on social media.

The suit seeks a temporary injunction against Goldin Auctions, which seeks to put the ball up on the auction block, and Chris Belanski and Kelvin Ramirez, the two men who Matus claimed wrangled the Ohtani ball from him.

Now, of course, this should be an afterthought to a performance for the ages; Ohtani went 6 for 6 at the plate as his Los Angeles Dodgers dismantled the Miami Marlins, collecting three home runs, two stolen bases, and 10 runs batted in, as per Yahoo Sports.

“To be honest, I’m the one probably most surprised,” Ohtani said after the game last Thursday. “I have no idea where this came from, but I’m glad that it was going well today.”

And keep in mind, this is a season where he isn’t even pitching, which he can do, too; elbow surgery at the end of 2023 limited him to designated hitter duty, so he’ll have to settle for ending the game with 51 home runs and 51 stolen bases.

(The most stolen bases by a player to hit 50 home runs besides Ohtani? That’d be Alex Rodriguez and Willie Mays — who were both tied for 24 in a season, according to StatMuse. As of this Friday, Ohtani has 53 home runs and 56 stolen bases. Good luck breaking that if your name is not Shohei Ohtani.)

Anyhow, what we should be remembering from that historic afternoon — and what we hopefully will be remembering from that historic afternoon once all the dust settles — is this video clip:

SHOHEI OHTANI’S SECOND HR OF THE NIGHT IS NO. 50 🐐

(via @MLB)pic.twitter.com/w3RgDAsezN

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) September 19, 2024

Instead, for a little while, what we’ll be focusing on is this fight:

Video shows fans’ mad scramble to grab Shohei Ohtani’s historic 50-50 home run ball 😮 https://t.co/kHZI15GO3j

(via @kaylanknit, Justin Walker, Ethan Krauss) pic.twitter.com/nKXmtQCn1L

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) September 20, 2024

Nothing like a little atavistic greed to pockmark an iconic sporting moment. To be fair, watching what looks like a grown man wrest a valuable item from a 18-year-old who appears to have at least some hold on it by leg-locking him is the Miami-est thing you can possibly imagine happening during a baseball game in Miami, so at least there’s that.

“Matus’ lawsuit says that on Sept. 19, he was at LoanDepot Park in Miami, Florida, to celebrate his 18th birthday and recording the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Miami Marlins on his phone when Ohtani hit his 50th home run. The suit says he was standing by the fence in left field when he saw the ball coming toward him. When he went to try to get it, the suit says, he ‘successfully grabbed’ it in his left hand and intended to keep it,” ESPN reported.

“Matus says ‘a muscular, older man’ then trapped his arm ‘in between his legs and wrangled the 50/50 Ball out of Max’s left hand.’”

Matus, the suit says, had control of the ball before it was “forcefully taken away from him” by Belanski, who I’m guessing is the guy in the black shirt. Again to be fair, going solely shakycam smartphone footage of the incident, that’s not a bad assumption — and an older guy holding some 18-year-old’s arm in a savage lock while he tries to secure a home run ball isn’t a great look to begin with, especially as he walks away in celebration with his arm aloft, not even acknowledging the kid.

According to CNN, the bidding starts at $500,000 and you can own the ball outright for $4.5 million.

Yes, congratulations, you may get a bunch of money by shafting some 18-year-old kid wearing a Marlins jersey — one of the team’s few serious supporters, if attendance numbers are anything to go by. You must feel awfully proud and confident in what this says about prospects for the game’s younger fans, such as they might exist, going forward.

Goldin Auctions, however, is confident that the suit will fail and doesn’t believe Matus’ attempt to have a temporary injunction placed upon the Ohtani auction will succeed.

“We are aware of the case that has been filed,” the company said in a statement to ESPN. “Having reviewed the allegations and images included in the lawsuit, and publicly available video from the game, Goldin plans to go live with the auction of the Ohtani 50/50 ball.”

In terms of the Los Angeles Dodgers, valuable baseballs and the month of September, I’m reminded briefly of the passing of James Earl Jones. While most remember Jones for voicing Darth Vader, I’m not the Trekkie sort, so I’ve never seen those movies.

(To those already looking for the “contact the writer” link, ready to pen a 500-word missive demanding my firing for this imprecation toward The Force™, please do note the puddle on the floor caused by the dripping sarcasm you should have detected in that last sentence.)

Instead, my first exposure to Jones was through the film “The Sandlot,” a charming kiddie film about baseball in the 1962 Los Angeles suburbs. Part of the plot is that the geeky hero, who manages to ingratiate himself into the coterie of baseball-loving youngsters, borrows a ball signed by Babe Ruth owned by his stepfather without knowing how important it is. It’s hit into the backyard of Jones’ character, who turns out to be a blind former baseball player with a vicious dog that destroyed the ball by using as a chew-toy.

Thus, this scene ensued:

Realistic? Probably not. In fact, heck no. I can point out at least one problem with the scene, and it’s not that random former players with baseballs signed by the 1927 Murderer’s Row Yankees team don’t just give them away. (Pro tip: George Herman Ruth last played a game in the major leagues in 1935, well after he should have retired. Jackie Robinson first played a game in the major leagues in 1947, well after he should have been a rookie. Factor in why that is and you do the math.)

But, then again, this should come closer to reality for a sport that’s the nominal national pastime — yet diminishing in relative importance to the rest of professional athletics — than a world where grown men are fighting teenagers on the ground for balls that they plan to auction off for millions of dollars to collectors who are perfectly OK with how it was obtained and with the individuals who are getting the money.

Let’s not even get into how much it costs for a single day out at the ballpark for a family of four, too, which feels like it might pay for half the ball on its own when it’s coming out of your wallet.

I’m not necessarily saying Matus — or at least those advising him, given the dude is only 18 — is in the right here, either; yes, it might seem nightmarish now, but missing out on a ball that wasn’t yours 30 seconds ago because of a scrum with some older, money-grubbing fanatic isn’t going to be the worst thing that happens in your life by a long shot, and it’s yet another thing that the American legal system probably shouldn’t be involved in. But, lawyers gonna lawyer, I suppose.

Finally, let’s not let Major League Baseball and its individual clubs off the hook here; there’s been enough of this nonsense that the commissioner or individual franchises need to set clear and obvious ground rules for possession of historic balls — or eliminate the practice entirely by finding a way to legally mandate every piece of equipment involved in historic moments like this is the property of the league, period, full stop, to be donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York — so that we don’t witness another sad display like this.

This isn’t asking everyone in attendance at every MLB ballgame to ask themselves “What Would James Earl Jones in ‘The Sandlot’ Do?” before making the slightest move toward a foul ball.

However, try to remember that there are more important things in your life than temporary pecuniary benefit, as any distressed lotto winner who had problems before the winning ticket will tell you five years down the line. Without being sure who’s legally to blame here, from a cursory glance, a lot of people involved in this deserve a hefty helping of shame heaped upon them.

If the lawsuit is indeed a stupid coda to an otherwise historic moment, at least it’ll be the first thing that pops up whenever you Google one of the principals involved in said suit. Perhaps that’s not the justice that’s needed, but at least it’s the justice I want.

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