Speculating what the Sox offered for Yoshida’s home run ball
Here at the Liver, we’re all about bringing you breaking stories several days to weeks after they happened.
In this case, it’s the issue of Masataka Yoshida’s first home run ball.
Yoshida, for you non-sports ballers, is the Red Sox latest rookie signing from Japan. He was touted as a great prospect and has lived up to it in his brief MLB stint, blasting a Monster shot in just his 4th game with the team.
A great start to a promising career. Everything is hunky dory right? Wrong.
You see, it’s tradition that rookies get to keep the baseball from their various major league milestones. That’s easy enough when you get your first hit and it’s a single, because the ball is still in play. The fielder just tosses it to the opposing dugout and you’re all set.
The first home run ball is a little trickier. Since by definition, a home run goes into the crowd (little Inside Baseball for you there), it’s incumbent upon a team rep to go into the stands and request the ball from the lucky fan who caught it.
Now 99.99% of the time, this is resolved simply with the fan handing the ball over in exchange for an autographed bat and maybe a photo op.
But not for Masataka Yoshida.
Masa’s ball was retrieved by the family pictured here:
I say retrieved and not caught because a Pirates fan caught it and rightfully handed it to one of the kids. Shortly thereafter, Fenway representatives came to barter for the ball. But no matter what they offered, the family refused to give it up.
Now if it was a momentous, record-breaking home run, I can understand hanging on to it until you get a fair price. But this ball’s only value is sentimental. Selling it fetches you maybe $200 at most — not exactly a price tag that will move the needle for someone sitting in Monster seats.
However, I’m not wholly surprised that these people dug their heels in to keep a bruised baseball. It’s a dick move to be sure, but not unexpected when the mom looks like a poetry professor from Vermont who calls herself a champion for the working class, but then screams at her landscaper for planting verbena instead of azaleas.
For his part, the father looks like a guy who owns a building company that wins every major contract sheerly through bribery, and hangs at the office as long as possible because he’s scared shitless of his wife.
Having said all that, it’s entirely likely that the Red Sox, who are a surprisingly cheap organization despite having a literal billion dollars, almost definitely lowballed this family. Which begs the question, what exactly did they offer for the ball? Here are my leading guesses:
Two Yoshida-hit balls of equivalent value
Give them the baseballs from Yoshida’s first 2 doubles. Two doubles = 1 HR. That’s basic baseball math.
Playoff seats located directly behind a pillar for a team that will be mathematically eliminated in July
You just can’t beat October baseball.
A free couch from Jordan’s furniture*
*Offer only valid if James Paxton actually starts a game in a Red Sox uniform and also somehow hits for the cycle.
A VHS copy of Wally and Tessie’s never before seen sex tape
Yeah let’s all sit here and pretend like we wouldn’t watch that.
GM for a day
You too can have the chance to trade away our best player for two low-level prospects and a bag of peanuts. Experience a day in the life of Sox GM Chaim Bloom, as you offer a 3-year/$6M contract to a player who eventually signs elsewhere for 10x that!
A meet n’ greet with just the irrelevant members of the 2004 team
Meet the guys who briefly played alongside your heroes and had no tangible impact on the outcome of any game. Remember Abe Alvarez, Lenny DiNardo, Ellis Burks, and Curtis Leskanic? Neither do we!
A duck boat tour where you get to eat one of the ducks from the pond
Sort of a pick your own lobster situation.
A Curt Schilling-signed pride flag
I promise you, that is a 1 of 1 item.
A free haircut from Bronson Arroyo’s barber
Culturally appropriate in style this season.
A 3% discount on all concessions for the season
You still pay $11.50 for a Bud Light and the discount comes out of the salary of the concessions workers.
A 1-day contract with the Red Sox
It’s meant to be symbolic but you end up being a stable 4th man in the rotation for the rest of the season.
A fun night on the town with Clay Buchholz that starts with dinner and ends with him murdering and eating you
Corporate naming rights for the left field foul pole
I’ll see the Pesky Pole and raise you the PornHub pole.
One consequence-free shot at John Henry
This one I would actually take.
Gonna be a flaming trainwreck hell of a season. Go Sox!
