Dodgers Team News

Dodgers Fan Makes Big Money Selling Albert Pujols’s 700th Home Run Baseball

Back in September, there was some minor hubbub when the fan who caught Albert Pujols’ 700th homer at Dodger Stadium wasn’t interested in giving it back to the future Hall of Famer. This caused much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth among a certain subset of baseball fans and media who have an overly romanticized view of what sports fandom should be. (And no, that isn’t intended to be a subtweet of my pal Clint, whose article is linked above in which he said it wasn’t right for the fan to keep the ball. Clint and I definitely have different opinions on this, though.)

Pujols, for his part, was much more diplomatic in his reaction to the news that the fan wouldn’t be giving the ball back.



Of course, the fan didn’t want to keep the ball. What he wanted was the big payday that comes along with catching a historic ball like that. And as we found out over the weekend, that payday came for the fan, named Marlowe Leal.

The bidding in the auction started at $25,000 and stalled out at $160,000 for several days, but on the final day of the auction, ten more bids came in, quickly pushing the final sale price to $360,000. We don’t currently know the identity of the auction winner, and presumably it would be up to him or her whether they wanted to be known publicly. The point of owning something like this is to show it off, though, so it seems likely we’ll eventually find out who the new owner is.

Congratulations to Leal, who said he plans to give some of the money back to youth baseball programs. He also refers to the money as “life-changing,” though, so it sounds like most of it is going into his bank account.

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Jeff Snider

Jeff was born into a Dodgers family in Southern California and is now raising a Dodgers family of his own in Utah. During his previous career as an executive at a technology company, he began writing about baseball in his spare time. After leaving corporate America in 2014, he started doing it professionally. Jeff wrote and edited for Baseball Essential for years before joining Dodgers Nation. He's also the co-host of the Locked On Dodgers podcast, a daily podcast that brings the smart fan's perspective on our Boys in Blue. Jeff has a degree in English from Brigham Young University. Favorite Player: Clayton Kershaw Favorite Moment: Kirk Gibson's homer will always have a place, but Kershaw's homer on Opening Day 2013 might be the winner.

One Comment

  1. PI sure hope it was Albert himself that made the purchase. And or a close friend who is going to gift it back to Albert Pujols.

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