M's seek fan who gave Raleigh's 60th ball to boy

SEATTLE -- Cal Raleigh's 60th location tally enactment the Mariners' All-Star catcher into 1 of the astir exclusive clubs successful baseball. It besides made for a memorable infinitesimal successful the outfield stands astatine T-Mobile Park.

During Wednesday night's 9-2 triumph implicit the Colorado Rockies, which gave Seattle its archetypal AL West rubric successful 24 years, the instrumentality who caught Raleigh's 60th location tally shot gave it distant to a lad successful the right-field seats.

Team information workers led the kid and his begetter distant to person the shot authenticated. The Mariners said the lad traded the shot for a bat signed by Raleigh and an invitation to ticker batting signifier connected the field.

The Mariners present are looking to link with the man, with elder manager of communications Adam Gresch making a plea connected societal media for anyone who knows "this unthinkable fan" to nonstop him a nonstop message.

The begetter of the boy, meanwhile, called it a "complete, gracious, sincere, random enactment of kindness."

"I told him the lesson, 'No substance what happens, this is the benignant of infinitesimal that you should wage guardant aboriginal successful life,'" Galan Ruelos said connected the "The Gee and Ursula Show." "It was beautiful, and truthful heartwarming."

Ruelos said his son, 12-year-old Marcus, ne'er brought up trying to get wealth for the ball. The Mariners offered the signed bat and took down the family's interaction information, and they near it astatine that.

"My lad whispered to maine and said, 'Dad, due to the fact that it's Cal, I privation him to person [the ball],'" Galan Ruelos said. "He was ne'er thinking, are we going to support it for money? That wasn't adjacent a thought.

"We person the aboriginal MVP, hopefully, and [Marcus] touched history, that's benignant of much precious; he'll unrecorded with that forever."

Raleigh is 1 of 7 players successful large league past to scope 60 location runs successful a season, joining Babe Ruth (1927), Roger Maris (1961), Mark McGwire (1998 and '99), Sammy Sosa (1998, '99, 2001), Barry Bonds (2001) and Aaron Judge (2022).

With 4 games remaining, Raleigh has a accidental to walk Judge for the American League record. Judge deed 62 homers successful 2022 to interruption the erstwhile AL people of 61 acceptable by Maris.

Information from The Associated Press was utilized successful this report.