“I’m learning Japanese to talk to Shohei,” said Cincinnati Reds’ Elly De La Cruz, referring to MLB’s highest-paid baseball star in history Shohei Ohtani. However, what the 22-year-old didn’t know was he’d soon rub shoulders with his idol. While a full-blown conversation between the two is yet to happen, the young player’s unprecedented success put his name in the annals of history forever…

Belonging to a small town in the Dominican Republic, Sabana Grande de Boya, Cruz discovered his love for baseball very early on. As he continued using tennis balls and rubber balls to practice, at merely six years old, the young boy moved out of his family home to pursue a career in the sport. He stayed with his coach’s brother and dreamed of owing a baseball jersey one day. His mother was the one person who always reminded him how proud she was. And, since then, the player has had a new goal: “I just want to give everything to her…She’s why I’m here, and I want her to feel proud of me.”

In 2018, De La Cruz got his big break—well, sort of. He signed with the Reds as an international agent that year, but it wasn’t until the Reds’ post-draft camp in 2021 that he earned a spot with the team’s Single-A affiliate, Daytona Tortugas. And since then, things have only been on an upward graph. The latest instance? As the ‘Holy Grails’ auction kicked with the sale of an Ohtani baseball card, on Tuesday night in Harlem, it was a special night for the prodigy as well.

It marked off the first live auction collaboration between Fanatics Collect, the collectibles arm of a global sports giant, and Sotheby’s. Ohtani’s one-of-a-kind 2018 Topps Chrome Sapphire Autographs Superfractor rookie card went for a mind-blowing $336,000, surpassing his previous records as well. But hold on, because Elly De La Cruz just broke Ohtani’s record with a staggering sale of his own. Can you guess how much?