LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (AP) — Freddie Freeman’s historic walk-off grand slam ball from Game 1 of the World Series has sold for $1.56 million at auction.

The bidding at SCP Auctions went into the late hours of Saturday night, according to a statement from the auction house on Sunday. It didn’t say who bought the ball.

Freeman, the Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman, came to the plate on a sprained right ankle with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning against the New York Yankees. He hit the first pitch from Nestor Cortes 413 feet for the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history.

The Dodgers won the game 6-3 and went on to claim the franchise’s eighth World Series championship in five games. Freeman was named World Series MVP.

The ball landed in the right-field pavilion, where it was corralled by 10-year-old Zachary Ruderman, who lives in Los Angeles. The ball rolled from the seat in front of him to his feet and he batted it to his father, Nico, who jumped on it.

The fifth-grader had been told he was leaving school early that day to get his braces removed. Instead, his parents took him to Dodger Stadium.

It’s the second ball connected to the Dodgers to be auctioned this season. The ball hit by Shohei Ohtani that made him the first player in major league history with at least 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season sold for nearly $4.4 million. It set a record for the sale of any sports ball.

NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump rang the opening bell Thursday at the New York Stock Exchange after being recognized for the second time by Time magazine as its person of the year.

The honors for the businessman-turned-politician are a measure of Trump’s remarkable comeback from an ostracized former president who refused to accept his election loss four years ago to a president-elect who won the White House decisively in November.

Before Trump rang the opening bell at 9:30 a.m., a first for the native New Yorker, he spoke at the exchange and called it “a tremendous honor.”

“Time magazine, getting this honor for the second time, I think I like it better this time actually,” he said.

Trump, accompanied by his wife, Melania Trump, daughters Ivanka and Tiffany and Vice President-elect JD Vance, grinned as people chanted “USA” before he opened the trading day. He then raised his fist.

In his remarks, he promoted some of the people he has named to his incoming administration, including Treasury pick Scott Bessent, and some of his policies, including a promise that the federal government will expedite permits for projects and construction worth more than $1 billion.

“I think we’re going to have a tremendous run. We have to straighten out some problems, some big problems in the world,” he said.

Sam Jacobs, the magazine’s editor in chief, made the announcement on NBC’s “Today” show, saying Trump was someone who “for better or for worse, had the most influence on the news in 2024.” Trump was Time’s Person of the Year in 2016, when he was first elected to the White House.

“This is someone who made an historic comeback, who reshaped the American presidency and who’s reordering American politics,” Jacobs said.

In an interview with the magazine that was published Thursday, Trump spoke about his final campaign blitz and election win.

“I called it ‘72 Days of Fury,’” Trump said. “We hit the nerve of the country. The country was angry.”

As Trump marked the ceremonial start of the day’s trading, the magazine cover featuring him was projected onto a wall at the NYSE. He was flanked by family and members of his incoming administration while his favored walk-on song, “God Bless the U.S.A.,” played. Afterward, he returned to his home in Florida.

The NYSE regularly invites celebrities and business leaders to participate in the bell-ringing, which has become a marker of culture and politics.

Trump has long had a fascination with being on the cover of Time, where he first made an appearance in 1989. He has falsely claimed to hold the record for cover appearances, and The Washington Post reported in 2017 that Trump had a fake picture of himself on the cover of the magazine hanging in several of his golf country clubs.

Earlier this year, Trump sat for interviews with the magazine for a story that ran in April. Time’s billionaire owner, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, criticized Harris for not granting the magazine an interview during her campaign with Trump.

In his latest interview, Trump reaffirmed plans to pardon most of those convicted in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “It’s going to start in the first hour,” he said of the pardons.

He said he would not ask members of his administration to sign a loyalty pledge. “I think I will be able to, for the most part, determine who’s loyal,” he said. But he said he will fire anyone who doesn’t follow his policies.

The incoming president also reflected on the future of his “Make America Great Again” political movement.

“I hope when I leave office, I’ll be able to also leave people that are extremely competent and get it. And we do have those people. We have far more than you think,” he said.

Trump said some of those people include family members and that some of his children would do well in politics. He suggested that daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who recently announced she is stepping down from her role as co-chair of the Republican National Committee, could be a part of his political dynasty.

“I think there could be, yeah. I see the people we’re talking about. Lara has been amazing. Look, she was the head of the Republican Party,” he said.

With Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., awaiting confirmation to be secretary of state, Lara Trump has said serving in the Senate is “something I would seriously consider.”

Trump crafted his image as a wealthy real estate developer, which he played up as the star of the TV reality show “The Apprentice” and during his presidential campaign. He won the election in part by channeling Americans’ anxieties about the economy’s ability to provide for the middle class.

In an interview on CNBC after he rang the NYSE bell, Trump likened the broad cuts to the federal workforce that he and his advisers have telegraphed to the TV firings he made of contestants.

“We’re going to be doing the same thing, I can tell you. Unfortunately, there’s too many of them,” Trump said.

Afterward, he walked the floor of the exchange and shook hands with traders.

GREEN LAKE, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man who faked his own drowning and left his wife and three children for Eastern Europe willingly returned to the U.S. after four months and was charged Wednesday with obstructing an intense lake search for his body.

The criminal complaint charging Ryan Borgwardt with misdemeanor obstruction offers a detailed account of how the 45-year-old pulled off his disappearance, including how he struggled to emerge from the water, almost didn’t make it through customs on his way overseas and was living in the country of Georgia when he realized he had left too many clues behind.

Police said Borgwardt turned himself in to authorities at the Green Lake County sheriff’s office in Wisconsin on Tuesday. A judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf during a brief court hearing on Wednesday afternoon. He was released on $500 bail, although he would only have to pay that amount if he misses a future court date.

Borgwardt told Judge Mark Slate that he would represent himself going forward since he has only $20 in his wallet. The judge advised he could get a court-appointed lawyer but didn’t name one for him.

It’s unclear what Borgwardt plans to do now. His parents were in court, but he was led out by bailiffs after the proceeding ended without speaking to them. Bailiffs escorted the couple out through a rear door to avoid waiting reporters.

Borgwardt was reported missing on Aug. 12. According to a criminal complaint, Borgwardt told investigators that he had been researching how to disappear, studying lake deaths and how deep a body has to sink so it won’t resurface.

He attended church with his family on the morning of Aug. 11 and then put his plan into motion that night, driving 50 miles (80 kilometers) from his home in Watertown to Green Lake. Sheriff Mark Podoll said Borgwardt told investigators he picked Green Lake because it’s the deepest lake in Wisconsin.

He paddled his kayak to the middle of the lake, inflated a raft he brought with him, overturned the kayak and paddled back to shore in the raft, dumping his cell phone and a tackle box with other identification in the lake on the way, according to the complaint.

Borgwardt said “he had to make this believable so that everyone, including law enforcement, would think he drowned in the lake,” the complaint said.

He told investigators he struggled to get out of the lake, sinking into waist-deep muck. Worried that police would find his muddy footprints, he tried to wash them off the road before retrieving an electric bike he had stashed nearby. He traveled 70 miles (112 kilometers) through the night to Madison, where he caught a bus to the Toronto airport.

He said he barely got through Canadian customs because he didn’t have his driver’s license, which he had thrown in the lake. He eventually boarded a flight to Paris and then to an unspecified country in Asia.

After landing in that country, a woman picked him up. They spent a couple days in a hotel, and he later took up residency in the country of Georgia, according to the complaint and a probable cause statement.

Investigators contacted Borgwardt through information they found on a laptop he left behind, including a photo of the woman he traveled to meet. He told investigators he had to leave the laptop behind to make his death believable but left too much information on it, according to the complaint.

Podoll said in November that investigators found passport photos, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks and communication with a woman from Uzbekistan. They also discovered that Borgwardt took out a $375,000 life insurance policy in January. Podoll has said the policy was for his family.

The sheriff’s office has said the search for Borgwardt’s body lasted more than a month and cost at least $35,000. Borgwardt told investigators he often checked the news for updates on his disappearance and thought the search would last only a few weeks, according to the complaint.

Borgwardt told investigators that he knew police would find him but he wanted to delay their efforts for as long as he could, according to the complaint.

Podoll announced in November that investigators had made contact with Borgwardt and were “pulling at his heartstrings” to come home.

The sheriff told reporters during a news conference Wednesday morning that Borgwardt returned to the U.S. willingly and turned himself at the sheriff’s office in the Green Lake County Government Center on Tuesday afternoon. He declined to detail Borgwardt’s return trip, saying only that “he got on an airplane.” He also declined to elaborate on what drove Borgwardt to return.

“That’s going to be up to him someday,” the sheriff said. “We’re not going to release that. … We brought a dad back on his own.”