What’s No. 62 worth? We are starting to find out.
Aaron Judge blasted his historic home run in Arlington, Texas, on Tuesday night in the first at-bat of the second-to-last game of the season against the Rangers. After weeks of speculation about how much money that baseball might be worth, now we have an offer on the table.
Cory Youmans is the fan who caught the lottery ticket ball off the bat of Judge on Tuesday and when he gets around to checking his texts and emails after his big night he will see a $2 million offer from the owner of a sports memorabilia auction house, according to the Associated Press. Previously, it was speculated that Judge’s final home run of the season could be worth upwards of $1 million. We have seemingly surpassed that number already.
JP Cohen, president of Memory Lane Inc., told the AP on Wednesday that he has texted and emailed Youmans with an offer for the baseball.
Cohen had previously pledged to offer $2 million for Judge’s 62nd homer. According to AP, he added that his company has a good relationship with the Yankees and it would be willing to loan the ball to the team for an exhibit. His team has frequently exhibited items owned by Memory Lane at Yankee Stadium. ”We did make an offer of $2 million and that offer is still valid,” Cohen said.
Youmans, who works in the financial world as VP of Fisher Investments, was sitting in the front row, section 31 in left field when he caught Judge’s 391-foot record-breaking blast. After catching the ball, he was asked about what he would do with the historic souvenir and he insisted he hadn’t thought about it to that point. Two-million bucks will certainly force Youmans to put some type of thought into his decision-making process.
The $2 million offer is short of the $3 million a fan received for Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball as he was the first one to break Roger Maris’ record of 61 homers in a season in 1998.
After making history on Tuesday, Judge said he did not have the record-breaking home run ball.
”I don’t know where it’s at,” he said. “We’ll see what happens with that. It would be great to get it back, but that’s a souvenir for a fan. He made a great catch out there, and they’ve got every right to it.”
