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| | News Unthinkable: An Insurance Analyst, Tony Voda, Fails to Catch (and Drops) Ohtani’s Famous 40-40 Club Home Run Baseball. By Jorge Alexandria - September 22, 2024"They give you a round bat and they throw you a round ball and they tell you to hit it square" – Willie Stargell
On the night of August 31, 2024, Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers' baseball pitcher and designated hitter, became only the sixth player in baseball history to reach 40 home runs and 40 steals in a single season. On the fourth inning of that game, he stole his 40th base and then came to the plate with the bases loaded in the ninth inning and made history by hitting a grand slam home run high towards the right-center field wall.
A lifelong fan who appeared to be in the right place at the right time, right in the right-center field stands, at Chavez Ravine, was Tony Voda, age 40. He is an insurance analyst from Minneapolis, Minnesota for the Trean Corporation (pronounced “Trē – on”) who provides insurance management services, insurance and reinsurance consulting to carriers and captives. Prior to that he had been at AON reinsurance as an analyst and prior to that an insurance sales agent for State Farm.
So, Tony knows numbers, statistics, the laws of probability, right down to the odds of catching a home-run ball, and the great fortune it would bring if he managed to catch Ohtani’s 40-40 Club ball. In fact, for the last 15 years Voda had been chasing home run balls in stadiums all over the country and had caught exactly two. As 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.”
Joshua Morey stands on Dodgers' Manager Dave Roberts' left
Months earlier he had paid hundreds of dollars 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.
And then like lightning it happened. A Grand Slam! Ohtani lofted a ball, with extreme force, high toward the right-center field wall at 118.1 miles per hour. The ball barely cleared the fence and fell directly toward Voda’s rainbow-colored glove. Then the nightmare. The ball bounced off Voda’s glove and back to the field, where it was picked up by Tampa Ray’s outfielder, Jose Siri, and thrown back into the stands far beyond Voda’s reach. It all went down in less than three seconds. Gone was a million-dollar payday. Voda knew this immediately as he placed his hands on his head with an expression of pure shock and disbelief. He stood there in agony.
Here is the YouTube replay:
How Ohtani's 40-40 Club Walk-Off Grand Slam Got Dropped ( Short Version) 大谷 翔平
Copy this link and open in a new browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XniMqgeWKk&t=2s
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 Voda’s glove’s pocket. But if you’ve ever gone to a Dodgers’ game (believe me, they are wild), one must expect that along with the crowd pushing, shoving, and elbowing you, there’s just a constant excitement. That is plus the sun hitting you in the eyes as the sun goes down over the batter’s plate. So Voda shouldn’t feel bad.
It looks so easy and natural to catch a ball on television but in real life, for a fan to catch any ball at a baseball club is extremely hard. In fact, according to FanGraphs.com, the odds of catching just a foul ball at a Major League Baseball (MLB) game are roughly 1 in 1,000. A home run, by contrast, is rare, and unlike a foul ball is not hit in every game. So, the odds are greater. ESPN.com placed the odds at only 1 in 5,000.
Shohei Ohtani has not only made the 40-40 club but just days ago made the 50-50 club. Source X.com
Oh, but the agony of defeat stings. Trust me, I know. In grade school, while playing shortstop for the little league Padres, in the Pico Boy’s Baseball League, I dropped a line drive that came straight for my glove in the bottom of the 9th. And what Voda says is true: “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.” Had I caught it, the game would have ended, and my team would have gone on to the championship game. Instead, the opposing team scored a couple of runs and won. For the cute kid that I was, I was crushed. And the crowd, (including several of my teammates’ parents), let me have it with jeers and catcalls. Talk about bad sportsmanship!
I was bullied for months. However, my ego recovered enough that I was able to stage a comeback- albeit in a different sport altogether- and captured the 1984 High School CIF (state championship) on the pommel horse in gymnastics.
It also didn’t end quite as badly for Tony Voda. Sure, he missed the catch, but the fans were sympathetic, (perhaps because the Dodgers won the game and neither “fan interference” was called over his fumbling of the ball nor was the home run taken away). Plus, he received an outpouring of support, including a phone call from Dodger pitcher great, Walker Anthony Buehler. Walker later told the press, “You could hear people all around Tony while I was talking to him, and everybody was already consoling him. It was as if, when he put his hands over his head, we all put our hands over our heads.”
The warmth that Tony Voda received from Dodger stadium that night no catch could match. And to top it off, Tony has a good heart. Back in Minnesota, he teaches Hockey skills to the Burnsville Rams, athletes that are developmentally disabled, ranging in age from 5 to 55. And he has been coaching them for 8 years. That alone provides Tony with more joy and satisfaction than an elusive magic 40-40 baseball.
UPDATE: As of this writing, the night of September 19th 2024, Shohei Ohtani reached the “50-50 club.” In a single game against the Miami Marlins, he hit his 49th and 50th homer and stole his 50th and 51st base in a sport in which no player had posted more than 42 home runs and 42 stolen bases in the same season in the MLB’s century-plus history. This time no-one came close to catching the ball. It was out of reach and bounced and then landed on the floor. The lucky fan who picked it up at LoanDepot Park opted to walk away with it and he could conceivably auction it for upwards of $2 million.
Jorge Alexandria is the Vice President of Workers' Compensation Claims for the J. Morey Company and former Director for the U.S. Labor Department, 18th Compensation District. He is also an Army combat medic veteran who received a Master's degree in Public Administration. He can be reached at Riskletter@mail.com
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Lonce Lamonte, publisher, editor, adjustercom; copyright by Lonce Lamonte and adjustercom; all rights reserved. lonce@adjustercom.com
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