Photo: Getty Images
A baseball bat used by Jackie Robinson in the 1949 All-Star Game sold for a massive $1.08 million on Saturday (April 30), Goldin Auctions announced.
The baseball hero broke the MLB's color barrier in 1947 and went on to play in the Mid-Summer Classic at Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn two years later in 1949 –– the same year the Cairo, Georgia native earned the National League Most Valuable Player Award.
The bat was one of two made for Robinson for the game he played some 73 years ago, Goldin said, and shows "light game use."
"The bat has been in the Robinson family archives since the day it was first used by Jackie and I guarantee that is 100% authentic," Robinson's widow, Rachel, said in a statement provided to Goldin and obtained by CNN.
The New Jersey-based auction house said the bat previously hung in the Robinson family home.
The seven-figure sale puts Robinson's bat as one of the highest-selling pieces of sports memorabilia in auction history, but that title still belongs to Babe Ruth, whose bat used to hit the first home run in Yankee Stadium in 1923 sold for $1.3 million in 2004.
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