Like the World Series game that a hobbled Freddie Freeman ended with a walk-off grand slam in October, the auction for the ball he hit went late into the night on Saturday. When the bidders' back-and-forth finally ended, 2½ hours after the deadline set by SCP Auctions, the price had reached $1.56 million, the Los Angeles Times reports. "It was crazy," said David Kohler, president of the Southern California auction house, which did not identify the winner. The windfall goes to a 10-year-old and his family, who already were fans of the Dodgers slugger. The homer helped the team to a five-game victory over the New York Yankees for the franchise's eighth World Series championship.
The ball landed in a mass of fans in the right-field bleachers of Dodger Stadium, where Zachary Ruderman competed with larger people for it. "It was rolling around the ground and I saw it; I knocked it over to my dad and then he picked it up and handed it to me," Zachary said, per MLB.com. "It was truly the best moment of my life." His father, Nico, said: "Everybody was just celebrating and jumping around. Everybody wanted to take a picture with Zach."
In October, the ball that became Dodgers teammate Shohei Ohtani's 50th home run sold for almost $4.4 million, a record. Hours after the Game 1 victory, Zachary boarded a flight with his mother, Anne, to go along with her on a business trip. Wearing a Dodgers cap and T-shirt, he was asked by a flight attendant if he'd watched Freeman's home run. "Yeah," he answered. "I caught it." (More sports memorabilia stories.)
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