Shohei Ohtani (Los Angeles Dodgers) is making Major League Baseball (MLB) history, but he's also making auction history.
Ohtani's 50th home run of the season was sold for $4.39 million (approximately 6.1 billion won) at auction by U.S. auction house Goldin Auctions, according to Yahoo Sports.
The net auction value is $3.6 million, with the remainder being auction fees.
This amount easily surpassed the previous record for a home run ball, which was Mark McGwire's Season 70 home run ball ($3.05 million-$4.15 billion).
The auction, which started at $500,000 on March 28, 토토사이트 hovered around $2.1 million until two days before the end of the auction, when a last-minute rush of bids sent the price soaring.
Ohtani became the first player in MLB history to join the 50-home run, 50-steal club when he hit his 50th home run of the season against the Miami Marlins at Marlins Park on May 20th.
He continued his home run and stolen base streak and finished the regular season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases this year.
The historic auction is over, but the final owner of the money is still to be determined.
Chris Velansky, who won the ball at the ballpark, turned down an offer of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Dodgers organization in favor of auctioning it off.
A fan named Max Matters later filed a lawsuit alleging that Velansky had forcibly taken the ball from him after he caught it first, and another fan named Joseph Davidoff also claimed ownership of the ball.
Auction house Goldin went ahead with the auction despite the court battle, and the verdict is still out on who owns the ball.