Want to buy a piece of baseball history? If so, it will cost you $1 million dollars.
One of the most famous baseballs in the game is up for auction; the Bill Buckner ball.
The actual ball that slipped through Buckner’s legs in game six of the 1986 World Series and led to the New York Mets comeback is once again up for purchase. The asking price is set for $1 million dollars.
The ball is currently owned by Seth Swirsky, a Grammy nominated song-writer and he feels it’s time for someone else to own this piece of baseball history. Swirsky bought the ball from the dillusional Charlie Sheen back in 2000 and will auction it off on eBay starting on October 15th and ending on October 25th (the 25 year anniversary of Buckner’s oopsy).
But is this ball really worth $1 million dollars? Had the Red Sox not won two World Series titles nearly twenty years after the Buckner incident then, yes, it probably would be worth all that and possibly more. But the “curse” has been ended and now Buckner’s mishap is merely a cruel reminder of how long Red Sox fans had to wait before they were declard champions. Buckner has even been back to Fenway Park to throw out the first pitch in the 2008 opening day. He waited until the Red Sox had two World Series titles since his imfamous squander, but none the less he showed his face in the place he used to call home for so many years.
Take into consideration what some of the greatest record setting baseballs went for and you’ll realize the Buckner ball is not worth a cool mil.
When Barry Bonds broke the record for all time home runs with 756, that ball was sold for $750,000. It topped Hank Aaron’s 755tyh home run ball that went for $650,000.
The Mark McGuire ball that was home run number 70 back in 1998 was sold for a whopping $3 million. This was also the first time any player had touched the home run record owned by Roger Maris, a record that stood for nearly fifty years.
So when these record setting baseballs are being sold for ridiculous amounts of money, is a ball that escaped Bill Buckner worth that much money? It’s not as though that particular play cost the Red Sox the ’86 World Series. They still had another game to play which they would go on to lose, costing them the series in seven games.
Once again, some baseball fanatic with way too much money will overpay for Buckner’s ball and then again the Buckner incident will fade away for another couple of years. Only to have it brought up again and remind Red Sox fans what could have been.
One final note. If Buckner’s ball goes for $1 million and those previously mentioned home run balls went for gobs of money, what would the ball that Derek Jeter got his 3,000th hit with have been worth? That poor kid will never know how much he could have sold it for in five years when Jeter is retired and entering the hall of fame.
Please take part in the survey and let’s see if the readers feel the same way I do about the Buckner ball.
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