Love Of The Game
The kid who caught Aaron Judge's 60th home run might be the purest baseball fan alive
On Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, Aaron Judge was one swing away from hitting his 60th home run of the season, which would have made him one of six players in baseball history to accomplish the feat. That made the eventual baseball that sailed over the fence extremely valuable, making left field the place to be in the Bronx, as that's where Judge has hit the bulk of his dingers this year.
Naturally, all sorts of dollar figures were being thrown around by the Darren Rovells of the social media world. How much would that ball be worth? $20,000? $100,000? $500,000? $1 million? *Dr. Evil voice* ONE BILLION DOLLARS?!?!?!? Ok, it was never going to be a billion, but six-figure and seven-figure sums were not out of the question for whoever came out of the scrum with the ball.
Michael Kessler, a 20-year-old Yankee fan from New York, was the fan who scooped up Judge's solo shot to the left-field bleachers in the bottom of the ninth. In return, he received an incredible sum of ... $0. Wait, WHAT?!?!?
As expected, this young lad was ripped to shreds on the internet. "FLEECED!" they screamed. "I would have been there all night negotiating!" they yelled. Other assorted and uncalled for name-calling ensued, too. While some of the points were certainly valid, what they all failed to account for was that Kessler appears to be an offensively nice human and quite possibly the purest baseball fan alive.
Kessler may have given away hundreds of thousands of dollars with this move, but you cannot put a price on being a genuinely good human. When absolutely no one would blame you for being greedy in a situation and you choose not to be greedy, that takes a seriously kind heart. By the way, if we find out that he negotiated for Judge to come back next season, Kessler deserves a plaque in Monument Park.
A Yankee legend, his friends, and Aaron Judge. Awesome night for Kessler, who will in no way regret this move in 20 years (hopefully).