The baseball that Aaron Judge dropped for an error in Game 5 of the World Series has sold at auction for $43,510.
Judge’s fith-inning miscue kick-started a meltdown that turned a 5-0 New York Yankees lead in an eventual 7-6 loss that clinched a championship for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Conducted through the Dodgers’ official auction site, the sale went through Thursday for the ball that will forever live in Dodgers and Yankees lore.
Judge was unable to catch the fly ball hit by Tommy Edman with a runner on first and ace Gerrit Cole on the mound, but the AL MVP’s error was the first in a series of Yankees mistakes.
Shortstop Anthony Volpe made a throwing error on the next play to load the bases with nobody out. Cole got the next two outs and looked on the verge of escaping the jam, but the pitcher failed to cover first on a soft ground ball hit by Mookie Betts, allowing Los Angeles to score its first run and extend the inning. The Dodgers scored four more times in the inning, erasing their 5-0 deficit.
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“I think falling short in the World Series will stay with me until I die,” Judge said after Game 5.
Judge hit 58 home runs with a career-high 144 RBI in the regular season to win his second MVP award in three years but hit .184 with 20 strikeouts in 49 postseason at-bats as the Yankees reached the World Series for the first time since 2009.
“You could feel the energy shift in the stadium,’ Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said of the fateful fifth inning. “It was almost like those fans were waiting for something bad to happen … When all that started unfolding, I could just feel it. We’re about to take over this game.”
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