TORONTO — When Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees tied an American League record 61 homers in a season on Wednesday night, the ball fell to the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen, where coach Matt Bushman recovered a memento potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. .
“The bad news is I’m out here in Florida battling a hurricane, but the good news is I can announce my retirement,” Sarah Walsh, Buschman’s wife and a Fox Sports reporter, wrote on Twitter.
Then, Buschman and Blue Jays late-game specialist Jordan Romano handed the ball off to Yankees reliever Zack Britton, who made sure it ended up in Judge’s hands.
Then, Walsh added the following: “Oh ‘cool’. He just passed without checking if our house was still here? I would now like to announce our divorce.”
And to make sure everyone totally understood she was joking, she returned to her Twitter account: “A reporter just doing her job here… according to my sources… Matt Buschman didn’t have to give the ball, but he did give it to Zack Britton,” he said, adding that he told them that “the families of Judge and Maris have traveled across the country. They deserve that ball.”
When Judge rolled a pitch past the left-field fence on the lower stands from left-handed gunner Tim Maiza in the seventh inning on Wednesday night, spectators in baseball gloves prepared themselves to catch a piece of baseball history . However, the ball hit two outfield gloves, bounced off a wall, and fell into the Blue Jays bullpen.
“Disbelief invades you, then shock and awe”, described Frankie Lasagna, one of the two spectators closest to the ball. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, I almost had. »
Lasagna, the owner of a restaurant in Toronto, knew about the bet when he bought his ticket in the first row. Furthermore, he admitted that he would not have walked into the stadium wearing gloves under normal circumstances.
“I thought you had the best chance in the front row. And now I was only a few feet away. »
With lasagna, a blue jays fan wearing a jersey identified as Bo Bichette came even closer to catching Judge’s home run. Clearly distraught after being shot, he declined to give interviews.