Dodgers to Review Process in Response to Uproar Over Ohtani Home Run Ball

After the Los Angeles Dodgers were exposed for their cold treatment of the fan who caught Shohei Ohtani’s first home run as a Dodger, they decided to make things right.

The Dodgers reached out to Ambar Roman and her husband, Alexis Valenzuela, Thursday and invited them for an on-field experience at Dodger Stadium. The team also said it will review its ballpark processes for retrieving milestone baseballs.

In an exclusive interview with Dodgers Nation, Roman discussed what happened after she retrieved the milestone baseball from her seat in the right field bleachers: Dodger Stadium security personnel separated her from Valenzuela, and forced her to decide the fate of the milestone ball she had in her possession.

“Security came up and hand-signaled me to go to them. At first, I’m thinking I did something wrong,” Roman said. “They said ‘No, we want to reward you for catching the ball.’ … They took us down to right next to the bullpen, the gate, to go in there. That’s where they had us. At that point, they didn’t allow my husband or the friend that we were with to go with me. They said they had to stay back.”

The invitation from the Dodgers is a pleasant surprise. The incident exposed a league-wide issue with handling milestone balls. There isn’t a consistent protocol in place for how to treat fans who catch the home runs.

Bryant Junco, a Milwaukee Brewers fan, paid for Aaron Judge’s 59th home run ball in the stands. Both Milwaukee and New York personnel denied his authentication request. MLB provides at least two authenticators per game, but they typically remain in the dugouts and only authenticate items on the field whose ownership can be tracked visually.

Mike Hutcheson is a St. Louis Cardinals fan who traveled to Pittsburgh and caught Albert Pujols’ 703rd career home run. Cardinals personnel offered him an autographed ball in exchange for the one he caught. He denied their request, and the ball could not be authenticated under MLB’s existing protocols.

“I’m actually a little disappointed in both the Pirates and the Cardinals because they’ve made absolutely no acknowledgment (of the catch),” he said in an interview with WTAE.

MLB has strict guidelines for how milestone balls should be handled.

Sports Illustrated described the job of an MLB authenticator in a 2021 story. Their job is to track and take note of each ball that is discarded, swapped out, or hit out of play within the foul territory on the field. Authenticators affix a tiny silver sticker, a hologram bearing a unique string of letters and numbers, to its surface. Their record of the ball’s life is logged in MLB’s unique system.

Once a ball leaves the field and its chain of custody can’t be tracked, MLB cannot authenticate it. It’s unclear whether or not stadium security personnel are explaining this process to fans who want their souvenirs authenticated. The only exceptions in recent history were made for the milestone home runs hit by Judge and Pujols.

Hopefully, the Dodgers’ public admission of handling the situation poorly will spread to other organizations and force the league to create a protocol for these situations moving forward.