Column: How one man lost Shohei Ohtani’s 40-40 home run ball and found L.A. love in return
His life was changing. A winning lottery ticket was approaching. Tony Voda was ready.
He was going to be rich. He was going to be famous. Magic was happening, and as the baseball fell from the night sky, Tony Voda was ready to live a miracle.
Shohei Ohtani was in the process of entering baseball’s 40-40 club with a walk-off grand slam in the ninth inning last week at Chavez Ravine, one of the most dramatic blasts in the long history of Dodger Stadium, and this anonymous insurance analyst from Minneapolis was right in the middle of it.
“Right up until the last second against the beautiful black night sky, I can see the ball, it’s seared into my mind, this is happening, this is really happening,” Voda recalls. “The crowd is screaming but you’re not hearing it, your senses shut down, tunnel vision happens, and all you can think of is, don’t mess this up.”
Then the unthinkable occurred, an event that forever changed Tony Voda on his way to becoming a hero.
He messed it up.
Shohei Ohtani hits a walk-off grand slam for the Dodgers against the Rays to join the 40-40 club.
A gazillion video replays have chillingly shown it a gazillion times.
He messed it up.
“A life-changing event was in my hands,” he said, “and I literally dropped the ball.”
This, then, would seem to be not your usual home-run catching story of good luck and great fortune, but a tale of deep remorse and enduring regret.
Except for one twist as pronounced as Ohtani’s swing.
On a Friday night when Tony Voda figured he was cursed, he was actually blessed.
For the man who will forever be known for one of the biggest fan errors in Dodger Stadium history, it wasn’t about what he lost, it was about what he gained.
It looks so easy and natural on television. But in real life, catching a home-run ball is about as easy as catching a raindrop in a thunderstorm.
“The average fan has no idea,” says Matt Walker, one of a dozen members of “Dodgerhawks,” a group of season-ticket holders that gathers at Dodger Stadium in an attempt to catch homers.
It’s nearly impossible.
“Did you see it clearly off the bat because you’ve been following every pitch? Are you on your phone? Is it hooking? Drawing? Is the wind a factor?” Walker explained. “The crowd is elbow to elbow and you’re getting pushed and shoved usually. Is it going to clear the wall, are you at risk of interference, is the outfielder bearing down?”
Walker said the conditions for such a catch are frightful.
“Are you standing in spilled beer, water bottles, and loose peanut shells? Are the lights a factor? The sun?” he said. “Oh yeah, and it’s coming in at 100-plus miles-per-hour. And the whole thing takes maybe three seconds.”
Tony Voda, 40, knows these truths. He has been chasing home run balls in stadiums all over the country for 15 years and he’s caught exactly two.
“Home run balls are important to me because of that deep childhood tie to the game,” he said. “You see them going into the stands as a young kid and you not only want to be the guy who hit it, but the kid who has the souvenir.
“It’s one of the only pieces of sports that rarely makes it into the stands but is coveted by many because of how elusive it is.”
It’s so elusive, Voda paid several hundred dollars a couple of months ago for one of the Dodgers’ celebrated home-run seats lining the outfield walls. He picked a random game against the Tampa Rays as part of a longer baseball trip through California.
He had no idea Ohtani would be on the verge of becoming only the sixth player in baseball history to reach 40 home runs and 40 steals in a single season. He could never have dreamed that Ohtani would steal his 40th base in the fourth inning and then come to the plate with bases loaded into the ninth with a chance to make history.
“I would have been happy if any Dodger scrub hit it to me,” he said. “And then this happened.”
This, meaning Ohtani lofting a ball high toward the right-center field wall.
This, meaning that ball barely clearing the fence and falling directly toward Voda’s rainbow-colored glove.
This, meaning the ball bouncing off Voda’s glove and back to the field, where it is finally picked up by outfielder Jose Siri and thrown back into the stands far beyond Voda’s reach.
Grand slam. Grand boot.
“Every fan’s worst nightmare,” said Walker.
Gone was a chance to meet Ohtani and return the ball, which Voda said he would have done. Gone was a six-figure payday if Ohtani didn’t want to exchange anything for the ball. Gone was the greatest moment of Voda’s baseball life.
He knew all this, and he knew it immediately. Watch the replay and notice that the moment the ball bounces off Voda’s glove, he puts his hands on his head with an expression of deep pain.
“Pure shock, disbelief,” Voda said. “My heart sank.”
As he stood there stewing in his agony, fully expecting jeers and catcalls from the surrounding pavilion crowd, the strangest thing happened.
His phone buzzed. It was Walker, who had met Voda before the game with other Dodgerhawks. He had already watched the replay and wanted to console Voda immediately.
“What just happened? What did I do?” Voda moaned into the phone.
“You did your best,” Walker told him. “You did all you could.”
Last year, the Diamondbacks swept the Dodgers out of the playoffs. This year, they are closing in on the first-place Dodgers in the NL West, with a big series in Arizona looming.
Sure enough, the replay shows a fan on Voda’s left bumping the pinky of his glove just a few inches before the ball landed, enough to prevent the ball from burrowing deep into the glove’s pocket.
“I guess it’s the ‘Minnesota Nice’ in me, I should have boxed the guy out, but I just didn’t want to interfere with another fan,” said Voda.
Also noticeable was Voda’s refusal to move to the edge of the fence, from where he might have had a cleaner shot at the ball.
“I didn’t want to get called for fan interference and see the home run taken away, are you kidding me?” said Voda. “I was being very careful.”
Too careful? Maybe. But maybe not.
The good sportsmanship with which Voda handled himself was noticed not only by Walker, but by several fans who surrounded Voda while he was accepting that initial phone call.
“You could hear people all around Tony while I was talking to him, and everybody was already consoling him,” said Walker. “It was as if, when he put his hands over his head, we all put our hands over our heads.”
The outpouring of support continued throughout the ensuing drone show, fans from all sections surrounding him and patting his back and sharing his regret, with one fan even accompanying Voda to his car afterward to commiserate on his bad luck. Then there were the words of encouragement from one stranger he’ll never forget.
“A guy came up to me and just said, ‘Next time, poppa,’” Voda recalled. “Like he was actually giving me a pep talk.”
Dodger Stadium can be a cantankerous place, particularly when a ball is hit into the stands. If a fan catches an opposing player’s home run, the verbal pressure to throw the ball back can be deafening.
But on this night, Dodger Stadium was a sympathetic, understanding place that filled Tony Voda with a warmth that no catch could match.
By the time he returned to his hotel he had received several dozen texts and many online words of support. There was no trolling. There were no insults. There was only a sense of kinship among Dodger fans who, it turns out, not only are historically forgiving of the players, but are also forgiving of each other.
Shohei Ohtani goes two for four with a home run (his 42nd) and two steals (giving him 42) as Dodgers defeat Orioles.
“To catch the ball would have been potentially life-changing, but, so, too, were the lessons I took away from missing it,” said Voda. “I know it sounds cheesy and silly, but while I may have lost a ball, I gained more love from Dodger fans than I knew I had, more love than I thought I deserved.”
Voda is back in Minneapolis now, but he is hoping to return to Dodger Stadium again one day, hang out with the Dodgerhawks, buy another home run seat, stick out that rainbow glove on a long fly ball, pray again for a miracle while knowing full well that he has already lived one.
“I love L.A.,” he said.
Moments before Ohtani’s swing, a security guard standing next to Voda wondered out loud if this game was headed for a movie script ending.
In all ways, it was, as Ohtani wasn’t the only one who went deep.
So, too, did humanity.
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