Sara Coello is a writer in ESPN’s investigative and enterprise unit. Before joining, they wrote about legal issues and crime for The Charlotte Observer, The Post and Courier and The Dallas Morning News. Coello studied sociology, journalism and Spanish at The University of Dallas.
Hajducky is an associate editor for ESPN. He has an MFA in creative writing from Fairfield University and played on the men’s soccer teams at Fordham and Southern Connecticut State universities.
Oct 19, 2023, 12:43 PM ET
COMMERCE, Okla. — Fans who could never afford a $12.6 million 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card will soon be able to buy a share of the Commerce Comet’s boyhood home for $7.
Rally, a collectibles company that sells shares in wine, vintage watches, sports cars and other memorabilia, will offer up to 47,000 shares in the house for $7 each while valuing the property in Commerce, Oklahoma, at $329,000, according to a statement from the company Thursday.
The offering opens to the public Oct. 27. Mantle famously wore No. 7 for the New York Yankees and also led them to seven World Series titles.
Rally is betting that the most lucrative name in sports memorabilia will carry a so-called fractional ownership deal for a real estate asset, something the company has never tried before. Rally has said in a regulatory filing that it plans to convert the house, which it bought for $175,000 in 2022, into a museum.
Company officials also see potential for Airbnb-style short-term rentals, a market for trading cards with pieces of the property embedded in them, and the construction of a little league field on the property.
“If we could do something like they’ve done in places like Graceland or in parts of Motown, where you have this place that a lot of people who care about the game and about Mantle will visit given the opportunity,” Rally co-founder and chief product officer Rob Petrozzo told ESPN. “We really believe that it’s just that they don’t know what exists.”
Petrozzo says shareholders will ultimately decide on the direction of the property, though Rally said in a September regulatory filing that it can “in its sole discretion determine when it is in the best interests of investors to sell” the house. According to the filing, Rally intends to distribute cash to interest-holders after covering operating expenses for a minimum of one year.
Rally plans to keep between 1% and 5% ownership in the house. Since purchasing the property, the company has spent about $50,000 on refurbishments and maintenance and expects monthly operating costs going forward.
Petrozzo didn’t have details regarding shareholders’ responsibilities when it comes to paying taxes, insurance, repairs and improvements to the property, or any operational costs of running a museum, but estimated that costs would be cushioned by Rally’s own cash reserves for three to five years.
Rally also intends to offer free shares in the property to city residents. The company has set aside about 2,200 shares for residents, which Rally is paying for to avoid diluting the value of other shares.
The home sits on a small street in Commerce, a city of about 2,200 people in the far northeastern corner of Oklahoma. Some houses near the Mantle home have been long abandoned, and some residents interviewed by ESPN responded with raised eyebrows to Rally’s valuation of the property. City administrator and former mayor Michael Hart estimated a similar home in the city would generally sell for about $10,000.
Mantle, widely considered the best switch-hitter in baseball history, lived in a few different homes within walking distance of the lead and zinc mines where Mantle’s father worked. But the property on the corner of C Street and South Quincy Street — a two-bedroom bungalow near the edge of town — is where Mantle learned to hit.
Mantle would take at-bats by the rusted tin-covered shed in the home’s yard, which leaned precariously to the east even during his time living there. With his right-handed father and left-handed grandfather trading off pitches, Mantle learned early how to hit balls coming from many angles. Eventually, they devised a game to keep track of his progress: any balls hit over the home’s short roof and toward Main Street counted as home runs, according to Mantle’s memories repeated on a plaque mounted next to the front door.
Apart from the shed that serves as Mantle’s baseball origin story, and possibly even including it, there isn’t much to see from the outside: Faded velvet couches and a mint-colored stove are visible through the windows, the haint-blue ceiling of the front porch. Inside, more of the same: An empty display case, folded easels in a bedroom Mantle shared with his six siblings and half-siblings, two plaques noting that the Mantles relied on the kitchen stove for warmth and that indoor plumbing was added to the bathroom. The home’s previous owners left behind kitchen utensils and a miner’s hat hung by the back door.
The Mantle family sold the house to new owners in 1993, and city officials have previously considered plans to turn it into a museum, though those plans never gained traction. A Mantle statue was unveiled at the Commerce High School baseball field in 2010.
Around town, few people have heard of Rally’s upcoming deal, and some are skeptical.
A few streets from the Mantle home, David Mason has spent 10 years turning an old factory building into what he claims is the largest flea market on Route 66. Mason said customers snap up Commerce Comet memorabilia more quickly than he can get hold of it. But the idea that collectors would be as interested in shares of a house as they are in physical Mantle swag made Mason snort.
“I wouldn’t; that sounds crazy to me,” Mason said.
Hart, the former mayor, grew up next door to the Mantle home, separated only by a wooden fence that his mother built to keep tourists from peering into their yard. Hart now lives with his family in a different home in the same neighborhood, and he still helps wandering sightseers find the house. They come every day, Hart told ESPN, often taking up a batting position in front of the shed for pictures. Hart said more of them visit the house than any of the other Mantle tributes around town.
“The most common reaction I get is: ‘This is it?'” Hart said.
Petrozzo said he can understand there would be “a little bit of skepticism” about the deal. The company is holding a town hall in Commerce next week “to make them understand our intentions are not to go in there and commoditize this really important piece of property, to ensure that it’s maintained properly and treated as the collectible that we feel like it should.”
Fractional ownership, by design, is rarely if ever lucrative. Part-owners profit when they sell their individual shares at a premium, or when the underlying asset receives a buyout offer at an elevated price, and part-owners vote to approve the sale.
Rally notes that sports cards and memorabilia can fluctuate wildly in price. For example, Rally offered 6,000 shares in a signed Mickey Mantle bat, used in the 1962 World Series, at $25 each in October 2020, valuing the bat at $150,000. Those shares last traded for $16.25, according to Rally’s website. A basketball used in a pick-up game between Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Magic Johnson and Barack Obama, signed by all, originally sold for $10 a share, and those last traded for $5.55, according to Rally’s website.
“There was a lot of hype and buildup [with fractional ownership during the pandemic], but it’s leveled off,” said Ryan Cracknell, Beckett Media’s hobby editor. “Just like cards, if you’re looking at it from an investment angle like stock going up and down, things are down.”
For baseball lovers and collectors alike, Mantle has long held an unparalleled esteem. The most expensive sports card or piece of memorabilia is a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card that sold for $12.6 million in August 2022.
“Mantle is directly connected to the growth of baseball cards as we know them today,” Cracknell said. “If you trace the history, if we look at baseball cards, when the 1952 Topps set came out, that set the standard. As it’s evolved, they’ve had their ebbs and flows, but they’re still around.”
But the average person can’t afford a $12.6 million 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card, a $7.25 million T-206 Honus Wagner or even the $474,000 that one collector paid for a Jasson Dominguez rookie card — the Yankees outfield prospect reached Double-A. So fractional ownership companies like Rally, Collectable and Dibbs stepped in to allow more collectors to participate.
“This is exactly what we look for when we acquire any asset: to have that history, it has to be relevant now [and] we believe will be relevant in the future, it has to have a story to tell,” Petrozzo said. “It’s an important thing to sort of be maintained and owned, not just by a group of people, but by the right people.”
Ichiro Suzuki became the first Japanese-born player to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, falling one vote shy of unanimous selection, and he’ll be joined in the Class of 2025 by starting pitcher CC Sabathia and closer Billy Wagner.
Suzuki, who got 393 of 394 votes in balloting of the Baseball Writers Association of America, would have joined Yankees great Mariano Rivera (2019) as the only unanimous selections. Instead, Suzuki’s 99.746% of the vote is second only to Derek Jeter’s 99.748% (396 of 397 ballots cast in 2020) as the highest plurality for a position player in Hall of Fame voting, per the BBWAA.
“There was a time when I didn’t even get a chance to play in the MLB,” Suzuki told MLB TV. “So what an honor it is to be for me to be here and be a Hall of Famer.”
Suzuki collected 2,542 of his 3,089 career hits as a member of the Seattle Mariners. Before that, he collected 1,278 hits in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan, giving him more overall hits (4,367) than Pete Rose, MLB’s all-time leader.
Suzuki did not debut in MLB until he was 27 years old, but he exploded on the scene in 2001 by winning Rookie of the Year and MVP honors in his first season, leading Seattle to a record-tying 116 regular-season wins.
Suzuki and Sabathia finished first and second in 2001 voting for American League Rookie of the year and later were teammates for two seasons with the Yankees.
Sabathia, who won 251 career games, was also on the ballot for the first time. He was the 2007 AL Cy Young winner while with Cleveland and a six-time All-Star. His 3,093 career strikeouts make him one of 19 members of the 3,000-strikeout club. He was named on 86.8% of the ballots
Wagner’s 422 career saves — 225 of which came with the Houston Astros — are the eighth-most in big league history. His selection comes in his 10th and final appearance on the BBWAA ballot, earning 82.5% for the seven-time All-Star.
Just falling short in the balloting was outfielder Carlos Beltran, who was named on 70.3% of ballots, shy of the 75% threshold necessary for election.
Beltran won 1999 AL Rookie of the Year honors while with Kansas City. He went on to make nine All-Star teams and become one of five players in history with at least 400 homers and 300 stolen bases.
A key member and clubhouse leader of the controversial 2017 World Series champion Astros, whose legacy was tainted by a sign-stealing scandal, Beltran’s selection would have bode well for other members of that squad who will be under consideration in the years to come.
Also coming up short was 10-time Gold Glove outfielder Andruw Jones, who was named on 76.2% of the ballots. Jones saw an uptick from last year’s total (61.6%) and still has two more years of ballot eligibility remaining.
PED-associated players on the ballot didn’t make much headway in the balloting. Alex Rodriguez finished with 37.1%, while Manny Ramirez was at 34.3%.
The three BBWAA electees will join Dick Allen and Dave Parker, who were selected by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee in December, in being honored at the induction ceremony on July 27 at the Clark Sports Center in Cooperstown, New York.
ATLANTA — The 2025 edition of the College Football Playoff National Championship game was not about vengeance. It wasn’t about proving people wrong. Nor was it about wadding up a scarlet and gray rag and stuffing it directly into the mouths of the chorale of outside noise.
Bless their hearts, that’s what the Ohio State football team and coaching staff kept telling us. That beating Notre Dame on Monday night and winning the school’s first national title in a decade wasn’t about any of that stuff.
But yeah, it totally was.
“We worked really hard to tune out the outside noise, truly,” confessed Ohio State quarterback Will Howard, words spoken on the field moments after having a national champions T-shirt pulled over his shoulders and punctuated by slaps to those shoulders from his current teammates as well as Buckeyes of days gone by. “But outside noise can also be a great way to bring a team together. You close the doors to the locker room to lock all that out, bunker down together and go to work. That’s what it did for us. I think anyone on this team will tell you that.”
Well, now they will. Finally.
The “it’s not about that” mantra was what the Buckeyes kept repeating, in unison, beginning way back in the summer weeks leading into a campaign when they were voted No. 2 in the nation in both preseason polls. Those expectations were earned in no small part because of a much-hyped offseason, powered by an NIL shopping spree worth $20 million, according to athletic director Ross Bjork, to lure transfers from around the nation.
We were told that, no, it wasn’t about those players justifying their decisions to change teams. Like Howard, who came to Ohio State from Kansas State, and running back Quinshon Judkins, who became a Buckeye after carrying the football at Ole Miss. Both are still viewed as traitors by many at the places they departed. But no, it was never about sending a message that they were right to pack up and move to Columbus.
Yeah, right.
“When people asked me why I left Ole Miss to come here, my answer was always the same: To go somewhere that I could win a national championship,” said Judkins, who scored three of Ohio State’s four touchdowns against the Fighting Irish. He grew up one state over from the site of the CFP title game, 270 miles away in Montgomery, Alabama. “Now, that championship has happened. And I’m not going to lie: To do it back here in the South, in Atlanta, in front of so many people who have known about me all the way back to high school, that makes it even more special.”
We were told that, no, it wasn’t about the all-star coaching staff, including offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, who once served as head coach with the Oregon Ducks, Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers and left the same gig at UCLA to take a demotion at Ohio State. In no way was this winter about proving that Kelly hadn’t lost the edge that once had him hailed as a mastermind of modern football offenses.
Um, OK.
“For me, it feels good to have fun again,” said Kelly, 61, flashing a face-splitter grin rarely seen during his NFL and UCLA tenures. Buckeyes coach Ryan Day, 45, is a Kelly protégé, having been coached by Kelly as a New Hampshire player. Kelly’s playcalling that has been a CFP bulldozer scored touchdowns on Ohio State’s first four drives. “I never forgot how to coach. But maybe I forgot how to have fun at the job.”
“I know this,” Kelly added, laughing. “It’s a lot more fun when you’re moving the football and winning.”
And, man, we were told so many times that in no way was this season or postseason about hitting a reset button on the perception of Day, in his sixth season as the leader of an Ohio State football program that is second to none when it comes to pride but also exceeded by none when it comes to pressure. Day dipped deep from that “Guys, it’s not about me” well on the evening of Nov. 30, after his fourth straight regular-season defeat at the hands of arch nemesis Michigan. When the Buckeyes were awarded an at-large berth in the newly expanded 12-team CFP, he once again implored to anyone who would listen that the narrative of his team’s postseason should be about its destiny rather than the future of the coach.
For a month of CFP games and days, all the way up until Monday’s kickoff, Day reminded us all that none of this was about him. Even though a security detail was assigned to his home in Columbus ever since the Michigan game. Even as the internet was aflame with posts about his job security and memes questioning his choice of beard dyes. Even as, in the days leading into the title game, his wife opened up to a Columbus TV station about the family’s dealings with death threats.
And even as, during the championship game itself, Ohio State’s seemingly insurmountable lead shrank from 31-7 midway through the third quarter to a scant eight points in the closing minutes.
But as the clock finally hit zeroes and the scoreboard read “Ohio State 34, Notre Dame 23” with OSU-colored confetti raining down over the Buckeyes’ heads, the story — as told by the team itself — was indeed suddenly about Day, and his staff, and his players, and their shared personification of the T-shirts and flags worn by so many of their supporters among the 77,660 in attendance: “OHIO AGAINST THE WORLD.”
Even if, for them, sometimes Ohio’s flagship football team found itself up against a not-insignificant percentage of Ohio itself, including the folks who refused to attend the CFP opener in Columbus because they were still mad about the Michigan defeat and no doubt will still consider this natty as having an asterisk because of that same loss.
Because for all of Day & Co.’s talk of this not being about revenge, the truth was revealed on their postgame faces. Their shared expressions of restraint, the ones we’d seen all fall, were instantly replaced by a collective look of relief. Their frowns washed away by Gatorade dumps, revealing the smiles of men who had indeed just sent a message and were finally willing to admit that had been their motivation all along.
You only had to ask. Because, finally, they would answer.
“I feel like, from the start of this thing, we were knocking on the door. But you have to find a way to break through and make it to where we are right now,” said Day, no longer stiff-arming the question but definitely still working to stifle his emotion. “In this day and age, there’s so much noise. Social media. People have to write articles. But when you sign up for this job, when you agree to coach at Ohio State, that’s part of the job.
“I’m a grown-up. I can take it. But the hard part is your family having to live with it. The players you bring in, them having to live with it. Their families. In the end, that’s how you build a football family. Take the stuff that people want to use to tear you apart and try to turn that into something that makes you closer.”
For 3 hours and 20 minutes, the Buckeyes pushed back on Notre Dame with both hands. They also pushed back on those would-be team destroyers and head coach firers. When it was over, they extended one finger in the direction of those same haters. It wasn’t a middle finger, but it was close. It was the finger that soon will be fitted for a national championship ring.
“Ohio State might not be for everybody,” Day added, smiling once again. “But it’s certainly for these guys.”
After winning a national championship with the Buckeyes on Monday night, Ohio State’s No. 2 quarterback is seeking an opportunity to start and will move on to join the Golden Bears. Brown has two more seasons of eligibility.
Brown entered the NCAA transfer portal on Dec. 9 but remained with the team during their College Football Playoff run.
The redshirt sophomore was the No. 81 overall recruit in the ESPN 300 for 2022 and lost a competition with Kyle McCord for Ohio State’s starting job entering the 2023 season. This season, Brown appeared in nine games while backing up Will Howard.
Brown threw for 331 yards with three touchdowns and one interception on 56% passing and rushed for 37 yards and one score over three seasons at Ohio State. He earned one start in the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic at the end of the 2023 season but exited with an ankle injury in a 14-3 loss to Missouri.
After losing to the Tigers, Ohio State coach Ryan Day brought in Howard, a Kansas State transfer who guided the program to its first College Football Playoff national championship since 2014. Howard earned offensive MVP honors in the Buckeyes’ 34-23 title game victory over Notre Dame after competing 17-of-21 passes for 231 yards and two touchdowns.
The Buckeyes are losing Howard, Brown and freshman backup Air Noland, who transferred to South Carolina, as they begin preparations to defend their national title in 2025. Julian Sayin, a former five-star recruit, is expected to be the frontrunner in the Buckeyes’ quarterback competition entering his redshirt freshman season.
Brown is joining a Cal team coming off a 6-7 run through its first year in the ACC that must replace starter Fernando Mendoza, who transferred to Indiana. Brown will compete with touted incoming freshman Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele, who joined the program after a brief stint at Oregon.