Fan Won't Give Up First Marlins Park HR Ball

Fan wants season tickets, Marlins offered a signed baseball bat

A Miami Marlins fan is squabbling with the team over the first home run ball hit at Marlins Park.

Greg Eisinger caught the home run off the bat of Houston Astros leftfielder J.D. Martinez last Friday. He tried to strike a deal with the team, but all the Marlins offered was a signed bat from Hanley Ramirez.

He countered with the season tickets offer, but the Marlins said "No thanks" and walked away, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.

"We don't want it," Marlins SVP of Communications & Broadcasting P.J.Loyello told the Sun Sentinel. "He wanted season tickets for it. We said no."

Eisinger said on the Kup & Goldie Show on 560 WQAM Friday that "I wasn’t trying to get a deal, what we wanted was to get it authenticated.”

But the team would not authenticate the ball unless he gave it to them, he said on WQAM.

Still, Eisinger said, a Marlins representative has sent him several text messages this week, but he did not accept their latest offers.

“I have text messages from them saying they would give me two box seats," he said.

Eisinger, a law student at Nova Southeastern University, probably has not taken any negotiations classes at law school yet, because he handled this one poorly. It's true that the Marlins would want some of the artifacts from the first days of Marlins Park's existence, but hard to believe they would value a home run ball hit by a non-Marlin as much as Eisinger thinks they would.

The Marlins aren't even sure if Eisinger's baseball is actually Martinez' home run ball. "He could have caught a ball during batting practice," Loyello said. "Not saying he did, just saying generally speaking. That's why they don't authenticate balls that land in the crowd."

Eisinger said on WQAM that was "a ridiculous comment by them."

“They came to me within 30 seconds, there were 200-300 people in the Clevelander staring, cheering, chanting ‘throw it back,’ and they (the Marlins) grabbed me right away. I didn’t have any other balls on me," he said.

Surely Eisinger and the Marlins can find some middle ground here. We propose the Marlins offer Eisinger four ticket vouchers – and as many Marlins Park arepas as he wants.

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