In lost Rockies season, one Colorado diehard won big by catching Shohei Ohtani's 300th home run ball

DENVER — Shohei Ohtani’s sweet swing is about to give a Rockies diehard a life-changing payday.

College softball gold glover Emily Sauvageau snagged Ohtani’s 300th professional home run ball on June 24 at Coors Field. The moment came in Sauvageau’s 833rd MLB game, and after a lifetime of Rockies fandom that started with her first trip to the ballpark at just 7 months old.

After the 21-year-old made the catch in a 9-7 Rockies loss to the L.A. Dodgers, she put it up for auction through Lelands, and the company believes the ball could fetch several hundred thousand dollars by the time bidding ends late Saturday night.

“I caught a ball that’s basically like winning the lottery,” Sauvageau said with a laugh, “which is so fitting for my life.”

It’s a life that has been attached to the Rockies almost since birth.

As a toddler, Sauvageau was in the stands for Game No. 163 and the World Series that followed. By the time she was 8, she had been to over 400 Rockies games. That number steadily rose throughout the rest of her childhood, as she made her way to LoDo for postseason runs in 2017 and ’18, and the MLB All-Star Game and Home Run Derby in 2021.

Even after Sauvageau left her Firestone home to play softball for Colby Community College in Kansas and, later, Adams State, she continued to regularly make treks to Coors Field — despite the franchise’s recent run of 100-loss seasons.

And when Todd Helton was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown last summer, she was there, too.

“Her passion for baseball is insane,” Adams State softball coach Dane Craig said. “And the money from this Ohtani ball, it’s kind of like the game’s giveback to her for all the dedication she’s put in on and off the field.”

The lefty Sauvageau wears No. 17 on the softball diamond in a nod to Helton, her favorite player, and she walks to the plate to “Your Love” as an homage to Charlie Blackmon. She transferred to Adams State this past year and promptly won the Grizzlies’ first RMAC Golden Glove award.

So it’s no surprise that when the Mead alum had the chance to catch her first home run ball on the fly, Sauvageau snagged Ohtani’s opposite-field shot. The ball traveled 373 feet to left field to where Emily and her dad, Dan, were sitting in their season-ticket seats in the first row of Section 153.

Dan is usually the home run catcher in the family, having nabbed 117 homers and 3,173 batting practice balls since he started attending Rockies games routinely in the late 1990s. But Dan had a pregame inkling that his daughter was going to get a ball off Ohtani’s bat that night.

“Before the game, I told her I had a feeling he was going to hit one over to us, and I told her she needed to catch it,” Dan said. “We laughed about it. I’ve never told her that in any other game we’ve ever been to.

“But before you know it, it was the sixth inning. … I saw it coming, and she stood up and she cut in front of me. I realized she had a bead on it, so I just got out of her way.”

Emily was wearing an old mitt, not the one she used in her Golden Glove season at Adams State. She basket-caught the ball just beyond the fence and the outstretched glove of Rockies left fielder Jordan Beck, who attempted to rob the ball over the yellow line at the top of the wall.

Less than a minute after she reeled in the homer, she was swarmed by Japanese reporters for an interview.

“I didn’t even know the ball would be worth something at that point, or that it was his 300th homer between (NPB) and MLB,” Emily said. “I was talking to people in the crowd, and they were like, ‘Maybe you could get some money for it!’ Once I started seeing the Japanese media articles coming out, I realized the ball might be worth something.”

For a fanatic whose room is painted purple and whose car is wrapped in Rockies logos and Larry Walker’s signature, the decision to put the ball up for auction was a forward-thinking one.

Sauvageau will graduate from Adams State next spring with a bachelor’s degree in sports management, and then will do one more year there to finish off her master’s in the same field. Already a certified agent, she wants to work in scouting or analytics for an MLB team. She plans on splitting the money from the ball with her younger brother, and saving most of her half — maybe minus a small bit of cash for a new bat.

“As much as it’s special to me because it’s the first home run ball I’ve caught, that money is going to do wonders for my brother and I for the next few years as we start our next chapters,” Sauvageau said. “We’re going to use it to set us up for success.”

The first bid on the ball was $25,000, but bidding is expected to increase substantially in the final hours of the auction. After the clock on the auction ends, anyone who placed an initial bid may continue to bid on the ball until there are no more bids for 30 minutes.

Sauvageau will forever see the ball as a personal silver lining in the darkest Rockies season yet.

“It’s been nice for me to have something so positive come out of this season, because I have so many great memories at Rockies games throughout the years, but the last few have been really tough,” Sauvageau said. “I really hope they do turn it around at some point, but until they do, I’ll always have this amazing memory from this season.”

That, and a fat stack of cash.