Shohei Ohtani’s first home run as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 3 against the San Francisco Giants came with some unforeseen off-the-field drama.
Ambar Roman was the one who ended up with the ball after Ohtani blasted it into the right field pavilion at Dodger Stadium. Baseballs with this kind of significance carry high valuations not only to the player who hit it, but also on the open market for memorabilia collectors who are willing to pay top dollar for a piece of MLB history.
Usually, someone’s first home run with a new team isn’t all that coveted from anyone other than the player, but the significance is greatly increased when discussing a player of Ohtani’s caliber hitting a homer for his new team, which happens to be one of MLB’s premier franchises.
The ball that was in Roman’s possession is estimated to be worth $100,000, but she made an exchange with the Dodgers staff for a pair of autographed hats, an autographed bat and autographed ball.
Alexis Valenzuela, Roman’s husband, accused team staff of separating him from his wife and pressuring her into accepting a substandard deal. News of this action by the Dodgers drew criticism from certain parts of the internet, which has caused the organization to reflect, according to Sam Blum of the Athletic:
The team also said it will review its ballpark processes for retrieving milestone baseballs.
“It’s something very important. I wouldn’t want the next person that this happened to to go through the same thing,” Roman said. “It wasn’t cool as a Dodgers fan. If it took for this to happen to me for them to change it, that’s great.”
Retrieving home run balls from fans has never really been an issue in the past for the Dodgers, but mostly because the stakes were much lower. A players’ first homer of their career can be pretty valuable depending on their career projections, but people usually accept a similar type of deal to the one Roman received for Ohtani’s ball.
The Dodgers ended up inviting Roman and her husband back to the stadium for a special visit, where they were able to meet Ohtani and received extra autographs from him.
Shohei Ohtani’s home run retrieval was a special case
Like with every other situation involving Ohtani, this situation was vastly different and was much more significant. While the Dodgers are reviewing on how they could have handled the situation better, the good news is that this situation was very rare. For instance, Freddie Freeman’s first home run with the Dodgers also occurred at Dodger Stadium, and many other players retrieve their home run ball without any problems.
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