Shohei Ohtani's historic 50/50 ball has a new owner -- the highly coveted piece of baseball memorabilia just sold for a whopping $4.39 MILLION at auction ... making it the most valuable ball in sports history.
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00:00Welcome back to TMZ Sports. Mike and Mojo. Mojo, that Shohei Ohtani 50th home run ball
00:10sold last night, Tuesday night, on the Golden Auctions block. You will not believe how much
00:16this went for. $4.39 million. Absolutely crushing the previous record for a ball that was $3
00:26million. Mark McGuire's 70th home run ball from some years back. Ken was here. Look,
00:31here he is, Mojo. I mean, there we are. That thing, I cannot believe it was worth $4.5
00:36million and I didn't try harder to steal it. It's remarkable, Mojo. We're not sure who
00:40the buyer was right now. They're still deciding if they're going to go public or not, but
00:44it shows how big of a star Ohtani is and I cannot believe near 4.5 million bucks for
00:49that ball. Remarkable. Remarkable.
00:51Goodness. I mean, shoot. What a jump over the previous record. Almost 1.4 million. I
00:58mean, the 70th. I mean, 70 is substantially higher than 50. Of course, it's not 50-50,
01:04but there's something to say about that. Then you factor in inflation over the years and
01:09these numbers jump pretty big.
01:11Mojo, I think it goes to show how big of a star Ohtani is. Don't you think so? I think
01:15it just, it's not necessarily even just about the 50, I think. I think it's also like a
01:19representation of this guy. We've never seen anyone like him, or at least we haven't in
01:23a long time, maybe since Babe Ruth.
01:25Oh, absolutely. I mean, that is a huge factor here. I mean, you said it from the start,
01:29man. They paid this guy the entire house and it probably still wasn't enough for how he's
01:35played on the field. I mean, there's that. And you got to know the star power of the
01:39athlete has to go into it. I mean, shoot for the right person. If it was their only home
01:43run ball of the season, literally one of one, you know, for the right person, that rate
01:48could be substantially high. So it's always about the story behind. It's not just only
01:53about the statistic. And when you're Shohei Ohtani, you kind of check all the boxes, right?
01:58I mean, you've done everything this year and now you're in the world series. So a really
02:02cool, great timing for this one. And yeah, crazy amount of money. Let's see how this
02:08one appreciates in the next five to 10.
02:10It'd be really interesting to see Mojo. Also be funny to see once this guy starts hitting
02:15more milestone home runs, that's going to happen. He's that good of a player. I think
02:20you're going to see fans who are going to great lengths to get these baseballs. And
02:24you know, knowing that this is basically a lottery ticket floating through the air. So
02:28$4.4 million. Absolutely amazing. Congratulations to Ohtani. Obviously, congratulations to Ken
02:33Golden, too. That's a pretty cool feather in the cap for Golden Auctions.