
18-year-old files lawsuit over ownership of Shohei Ohtani’s historic 50-50 ball, seeks to prevent auction
CNN
An 18-year-old has filed a lawsuit over the ownership of the ball Shohei Ohtani made baseball history with when he became the inaugural member of the 50-50 club.
An 18-year-old has filed a lawsuit over the ownership of the ball Shohei Ohtani made baseball history with when he became the inaugural member of the 50-50 club. On September 19, the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar went where no player has gone before, hitting his 50th homer and stealing his 50th base of the season in a 20-4 win against the Miami Marlins. The ball had been put up for auction by auctioneers Goldin, with bids starting at $500,000 and collectors able to purchase it privately outright for $4.5 million. The auction is set to begin on Friday at noon ET and end October 16. However, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Court, 18-year-old Max Matus has claimed that he is in fact the rightful owner of the ball and is seeking “a temporary injunction” to prevent the “concealing, absconding with or selling” of it. Matus claims that he went to the Dodgers vs. Marlins game for his 18th birthday and caught the ball, according to the filing. However, a few seconds later, the filing claims, Chris Belanski – one of three named defendants in the lawsuit as well as Goldin and Kelvin Ramirez trapped Matus’ “arm in between his legs and wrangled the 50/50 Ball out of Max’s left hand.”
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If you scrunch your eyes up just as an offensive line sets for a play, the outlines of the players look like chess pieces being moved around the board by some invisible hand. Some run in the straight lines followed by a rook, some follow the diagonals of a bishop, and others hold off opponents like a pawn.