After Success With Mark McGwire Ball Auction, Guernsey’s Boss Says Aaron Judge Ball Could Break Record

Although the baseball season is over for Aaron Judge, he’s on the verge of another record.

The ball he hit for 62nd home run, one more than the former American League mark owned by Roger Maris, has become the center of a bidding war involving several auction houses and attorneys.

Caught by Cory Youmans of Dallas during a Yankees-Rangers game at Globe Life Field on Oct. 4, the ball could bring even more than the record $3 million paid in a 1999 auction for Mark McGwire’s 70th home run.

So says Arlan Ettinger, long-time president of Guernsey’s, the New York auction house that handled the McGwire auction at Madison Square Garden.

“I’m not a fortune-teller,” Ettinger said. “All I have is instincts that have been developed over 47 years running Guernsey’s. I have been hearing others state that the Aaron Judge ball could bring $2 million.”

With several attorneys and auction houses involved, that could be a conservative estimate.

“A perfect storm of circumstances make this ball as valuable as it is,” said Ettinger, a one-time New York Giants fan who has a Monte Irvin cap on his desk.

“You start with a guy who’s an All-American figure. Fans of opposing teams give him standing ovations. The price will go up more if he wins the MVP award. The fact that he’s a Yankee is going to add to it.”

A native of Joplin, MO who liked the original Mets but slowly switched his rooting interest to the Yankees, Ettinger hopes his personal history gives him an edge in acquiring the Judge ball.

Youmans works in Dallas as a vice president at Fisher Investments, the same firm whose owner, Ken Fisher, once worked with Ettinger on a project to help fund Wounded Warrior. That auction occurred on the deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid, berthed on the Hudson in New York harbor.

“If the gentleman who has the ball sells it, we would like to get it,” he said by telephone. “We’ve reached out to him with a package that spells everything out. Now we just have to hope it happens.”

While Judge is auctioning himself to the highest bidder as a newly-minted free agent player, his free-agent home run ball could follow him to the auction bloc. But that depends on a decision by Youmans to keep it, return it to Judge, or sell it.

Guernsey’s isn’t as big as Sotheby’s or Christie’s but has a terrific track record.

“In 1980,” Ettinger explained, “the record price for the sale of any baseball was $5,000. In 1980, that was a pretty big deal. Over the next 18 years, however, the record kept climbing. By 1998, it had reached $120,000.

“Then Sotheby’s, the world’s largest auction house, landed the first home run hit by Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium in 1923. It went for $106,000, $6,000 more than the previous record.

“Fast forward four or five months to little Guernsey’s. The man who caught it, Philip Ozersky, brought it to us. After we announced we had McGwire’s 70th home run, everyone who caught previous record balls all called and asked if they could be included.

“We opened the auction to other balls so at the end of the day, we had 50 balls in the auction, including 10 related to McGwire/Sosa and also the last home run of Hank Aaron’s career.”

Madison Square Garden was packed on that mid-January day. “It was pandemonium,” Ettinger recalled. “You couldn’t get another person in there.”

When the auction began, Guernsey’s did something different: it offered its star attraction first.

According to Ettinger, “We put McGwire’s 70th in Lot No. 1. Normally you hold the star attraction til you get closer to the end. But the theory I employed was that we had a number of heavy hitters prepared to duke it out.

“I’ll use the Las Vegas term ‘whales’ for people not accustomed to losing. Those people didn’t want to go home to their spouses and say they got skunked. So they could bid on other balls instead.”

For McGwire’s 70th, the winning bid of $3,005,000 by Canadian film-maker Todd Macfarlane was an unbelievable 2300 per cent above the previous world record for a baseball. Fifteen other balls in the auction that night also topped the old $126,000 mark.

One of those, Aaron’s 755th and last home run, had been caught by a Milwaukee Brewers groundskeeper named Richard Arndt. After protracted negotiations, including a telephone call from Aaron to Ettinger, Guersney’s got the treasured ball.

“Aaron called and said, ‘I hear you have that baseball. It should have come back to me but the man who caught it kept it. I would like to give the proceeds from the auction to a charity.’

“I told him the man was trying to save a church. I had met him and he was a quiet, humble, modest man. In the end, it was agreed they would split it.”

Aaron ended up with half of the proceeds, Ettinger said.

At age 78, the Guernsey’s executive has seen it all. A one-time artist who did a page for Esquire and several record albums, he once met Clare Ruth, Babe’s widow, at Gallagher’s Restaurant, a Manhattan landmark where one of his paintings was unveiled.

Mrs. Ruth was so impressed that she pulled out a wallet-sized photo of Ruth standing next to her at a Yankee Stadium adorned with bunting – indicative of a special event.

“She said if I could paint that picture, she would make sure it hung in Yankee Stadium forever,” he revealed. “Michael Burke was there too and said he would keep that promise. So I did the artwork, we had an unveiling, and I have a nice photograph of Clare Ruth standing next to the painting and me. It’s big, nearly three-quarters life-sized.

“Shortly after that, however, she got ill and Mike Burke sold the Yankees. So the two people committed to seeing it hang in Yankee Stadium were out of the picture. The painting was in storage for awhile and also hung in my son’s room but we took it down after he died a few months ago. I still have it.”

Ettinger also has memories of successful auctions, including the sale of a Mickey Mantle rookie card for $12 million.

“We did a Mantle auction and a Topps auction,” said the Guernsey’s chief, who collected cards as a boy. “I worked with Merlin Mantle and his sons Danny and David. It was thrilling to work with them.

“When we held that auction in Madison Square Garden, there was a bitter ice storm that stopped all transportation. Yet people flooded the Garden to be present. It was a teary event. People were emotional about it. We had several of his MVP trophies, all the contracts he signed, and everything imaginable.”

The Topps auction occurred after the gum company announced plans to move from Brooklyn to Manhattan. “I was thrilled by that opportunity,” said Ettinger, who collected cards as a youth.

“They had an enormous warehouse of material used in the creation of those cards. We came across zillions of files and documents, including a folder that said ‘Willie Mays.’

“If I had a hero, it was Willie. I saw him play at the Polo Grounds.

“When he signed with Topps, they paid players a $5 signing fee but gave them premiums – gifts – that Topps could somehow get. In the file was a letter from Willie to (Topps president) Arthur Shorin complaining that the toaster Topps sent him kept burning his toast.

“That auction also included the original little painting that was on the Mantle card that later sold for $12 million. Topps wanted the art to be done actual size, so the artist had to make a tiny little painting and make it accurate. It sold for something like $126,000 – the top lot in that auction, which was in 1989.”

At age 78, Ettinger still dabbles in art and sculpture while restoring a Connecticut home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. But he divides his time, spending much of the work week in New York.

If he succeeds in acquiring the Aaron Judge ball, organizing its auction is certain to take certain stage, perhaps for the next few months.