SI

Shohei Ohtani Baseball Worth $4 Million Lands in Globally-Recognized Skyscraper

Taipei 101 is the new home for Ohtani's 50/50 ball.

Josh Wilson

Ohtani hit 54 home runs and stole 59 bases in 2024
Ohtani hit 54 home runs and stole 59 bases in 2024 / Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

The upper stories of Taipei 101—a 101-story skyscraper in Taiwan, the tallest of the region—feature a massive 660-ton sphere that counteracts earthquake tremors to keep the building stable. It is a marvel of human engineering and ingenuity making a skyscraper of this size possible in an earthquake-heavy region.

Recently, the building welcomed a similarly fawned-after sphere, albeit 660 tons lighter.

Taipei 101 is the new home of Shohei Ohtani's 50th home run of the 2024 MLB season, the ball that established the 50/50 club (50 home runs, 50 stolen bases). A private investment firm in Taiwan purchased the ball for $4.4 million and has put it on public display in the skyscraper's observation deck.

NHK reports the investment firm that owns the ball lent it to the exhibition for free. In an opening ceremony, the chief of the investment firm "said he hopes the ball will inspire the dreams and hopes of children in Taiwan and help further deepen exchanges between Japan and Taiwan," according to NHK.

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Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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