Yankees’ fan Christian Lopez gets even luckier – MLB News
The ardent New York Yankees fan Christian Lopez who had caught Derek Jeter’s historic 3,000th hit got further limelight on Thursday when the Yankees decided to pay off his student loans and taxes.
Lopez rose to prominence last week when he luckily caught the ball hit by Derek Jeter - being the 3,000th hit the New York Yankees captain had. But instead of keeping the ball with himself, he announced to return it to Jeter, catching enormous
media attention.
The Yankees announced to pay for all his tickets for front row seats with any post-season games in the remaining games of second-half, three bats and three balls signed. The total amount of all these rewards exceeded $50,000.
However, the debate intensified on what was a somewhat interesting aspect of it all. Lopez had said he owed $150,000 in student loans, something that came out as too huge a sum of money for Lopez to pay himself.
However, the entire Yankees gathered on Thursday to pay off his student loans. "He was all about, 'My job is to support the Yankees,'" Modell's President Mitchell Modell said. "But someone's got to think about Christian."
Modell’s, Sporting Goods, gave Lopez the exorbitantly priced - $40,000 ring and Topps offered baseball cards to Lopez for the next season. "I'm speechless," Lopez said of the outpouring of generosity.
The debate originally surfaced a few days back when it came to light that Lopez had to pay $15,000 tax for the seats that he will get for the whole season. This was too much for Lopez who already had to pay thousands in taxes.
A frustrated Lopez said in an interview, "Worse comes to worse, I'll have to pay the tax. I'm not going to return the seats. I have a lot of family and friends who will help me out if need be. The IRS has a job to do, so I'm not going to hold it against
them, but it would be cool if they helped me out a little on this."
Having already achieved a celebrity-like status, the Yankees fan Lopez commands enormous media attention wherever he goes. The very fact that he decided to return the ball won him this glory.
It was expected that he would keep the ball with himself, but he decided the opposite, maintaining the Yankees hitter, Derek Jeter, had all the rights to possess the ball himself for he had worked over 15 years to achieve this magnificent glory in the history
of baseball.
Lopez’s honesty and the fact that he returned the ball to Jeter have garnered an enormous amount of media attention on the young Yankees’ fan. The club has also shown great fortitude in helping and supporting the young fan.
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