Alcides Escobar’s World Series inside-the-park home run ball sells for $19,200

In a span of five games, the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets created several memorable moments during this year’s World Series. A couple of them even came on the usually uneventful first pitch of the game, which forced viewers to be prompt and pay attention from beginning to end during all five games.

Kansas City’s Alcides Escobar helped make that a necessity by frequently swinging at the game’s first pitch and producing during the postseason. In fact, in Game 1 of the World Series, Escobar teed off on Matt Harvey’s first offering, sending it to left-center field at Kauffman Stadium. After some miscommunication between outfielders Yoenis Cespedes and Michael Conforto and a fortunate bounce that alluded both, Escobar raced all the way around the bases for an inside-the-park home run.

[The epic story of the 2015 Royals and their World Series championship]

In the process, Escobar set the tone for Kansas City’s aggressive play that would dominate the series. It also led to Mets right-hander Noah Syndergaard attempting to reset the tone in Game 3 by knocking Escobar off the plate with his first pitch. 

If nothing else, those were two of the more buzzworthy — pun intended — moments during an action-packed series. And as we noted before the series was over, the baseballs used in both cases were retrieved, saved and authenticated by MLB, and then put up for auction on MLB.com.

Not surprisingly, people were anxious to bid on both. However, in the case of Escobar’s home run ball, the bidding reached some big numbers, ultimately selling for $19,200. 

It’s always interesting to see how much interest these types of moments and momentos create and the value that’s derived from them. It can be unpredictable, though obviously once Kansas City clinched its first World Series championship since 1985, everything they accomplished took on added value. That was likely the driving force here, as Escobar’s moment will now stand the test of time in Royals and World Series history. 

By comparison, Syndergaard’s Game 3 first pitch, which we wrote about as a perceived turning point had the Mets rallied to win the series, sold for roughly half the money. 

Still really good money, but we’re guessing the demand would have doubled or more had New York ultimately won the series. Especially if Syndergaard pitched them to victory in Game 7. 

As it is, these are the final numbers we arrived at. We should also note that both baseballs fell well short of the record auction price for a game-used ball on MLB.com. That belongs to the ball thrown for the first pitch of Game 7 of the 2014 World Series, which sold for $28,890.

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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813