A sports memorabilia auction is never as gripping as the ballgame that gave the item being auctioned immense value. But bidding for the baseball Freddie Freeman crushed for a grand slam that gave the Dodgers a walk-off victory in Game 1 of the World Series against the New York Yankees in October did generate its own brand of drama.

The ball was sold for $1.56 million Saturday night by SCP Auctions, but not before a spirited back-and-forth between bidders that extended the bidding 2½ hours beyond the initial deadline.

The money goes to the family of the 10-year-old boy who corralled the ball in the right-field bleachers at Dodger Stadium amid the delirious celebration after Freeman homered with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th inning, and the Dodgers one out away from defeat.

The moment will forever live among the very best in Dodgers history, rivaling Kirk Gibson’s eerily similar walk-off homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. The memory will always be cherished by Zachary Ruderman and his parents, Nico and Anne. The money will be life-changing for the Venice family.

Yet it appeared the bidding wouldn’t reach seven figures when the highest offer was $800,000 with five minutes left in the weeklong auction. But a bid of $850,000 triggered a 30-minute extension, which again counted down to nearly zero before a $900,000 bid was entered.

On it went, each extension nearly expiring before the next bid was made, all the way to $1.3 million. The buyer’s premium and fees hiked the total to $1.56 million.

“It was crazy,” said David Kohler, president of SCP Auctions. “Sometimes it happens. We are thrilled at the result and are honored to handle one of the most important artifacts in World Series history.”

The record auction price for a baseball is $4.392 million, set only two months ago for the ball Shohei Ohtani hit at LoanDepot Park in Miami on Sept. 19 to become the first MLB player to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season. The previous record of $3.05 million was paid in 1999 for Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball from the 1998 season.

How the money from the sale of the Ohtani ball will be divided is in dispute. Max Matus filed a lawsuit in Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit Court against the man who ended up with the ball, Christian Zacek, fellow Florida resident Kelvin Ramirez and Goldin Auctions, claiming ownership of the ball.

There is no such controversy surrounding the Freeman ball, which soared directly at Zachary Ruderman, whose avowed favorite player is Freeman and who keeps score at the frequent games his family attends.

“Everybody was on their feet, nobody was even sitting,” Zachary told The Times. “I was standing on the bleacher seat so I could see. A second or two after the crack of the bat, I realized it was coming directly toward us.

“It was honestly a reaction, an instinct.”

Everyone sitting around him was delirious with joy at the Dodgers victory, remaining at the stadium while the team celebrated on the field. Nobody tried to snatch the ball from him.

“Hundreds of people were mobbing me,” Zachary said. “So many people wanted to take a photo with me and the ball. It was overwhelming.”

Early the next morning, Zachary accompanied his mom, Anne, on a business trip. He wore a Dodgers cap and T-shirt and a flight attendant asked him if he’d watched the walk-off home run.

“Yeah,” Zachary replied, “I caught it.”

The flight attendant jumped on the plane’s public address system and announced Zachary’s great fortune to the other passengers. He stood from his seat to applause.

The most expensive MLB item ever sold at auction is Babe Ruth’s 1932 World Series jersey, which sold for $24.12 million in August 2024. The Yankees No. 3 road jersey was worn by Ruth when he hit his legendary “called shot” home run at Wrigley Field.

The identity of the new owner of the Freeman ball has not been made public. Zachary Ruderman has had his moment of fame and — now — fortune, and his family only hopes the ball will be be displayed for Dodgers fans to enjoy and reminisce.

“It’s a lot more attention than my son has ever had,” Nico Ruderman said. “People recognize him. I mean, literally everywhere we go people stop him and want to take pictures with him. He’s really actually been loving it. It’s been a fun experience for him.

“It’d be great if the ball is displayed in Dodger Stadium so fans can see this special piece of history.”

Glendale’s blue-collar software firm ServiceTitan saw its shares close up 42% after debuting Thursday on the Nasdaq in its initial public offering.

The provider of business management software for plumbers and other contractors priced its IPO of 8.8 million shares at $71, raising gross proceeds of $625 million. The shares, which had hit $105 in early afternoon trading, closed at $101. The company has the potential to raise more capital if underwriters exercise a 30-day option to sell an additional 1.32 million shares.

The shares, which trade under the ticker symbol TTAN, were initially priced at $52 to $57 before being upped earlier this week to a range of $65 to $67, indicating demand had picked up for the offering. At its $71 debut price, the company had a market value of $6.42 billion, lower than the $7.6 billion valuation it had after a November 2022 funding round. However, with the surge in its stock price, the company’s market cap hit $9.1 billion at the close of trading.

“I was a bit surprised. I don’t think even the underwriters were expecting this,” said Riley Mullin, an analyst with Renaissance Capital, who noted the closing price was almost double the low end of the IPO’s first pricing range, making the company “richly valued.”

He said ServiceTitan benefited from a big interest in software and tech stocks, including artificial intelligence, as well as investor excitement over the incoming Trump administration.

There have been only a handful of software IPOs this year, with ServiceTitan the largest since data management company Rubrik went public in April. However, there are signs the market is recovering after being battered by inflation and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes.

ServiceTitan counts about 8,000 contracting firms as customers, providing a soup-to-nuts software package that can manage booking appointments, generating estimates and processing invoices as well as payroll and dispatching workers. Clients range in size from family-owned contractors to large national franchises totaling more than 100,000 technicians. The firms pay a subscription fee for its services.

More than $300 million of the IPO’s proceeds will go to retiring all of ServiceTitan’s nonconvertible preferred stock, a type of stock that typically pays holders a consistent dividend but cannot be converted into common stock. The company, which wants to expand the number of trades and markets it serves, will use the remainder for general corporate purposes and possible acquisitions.

ServiceTitan was founded in 2007 by two college friends from Glendale, Ara Mahdessian, 39, and Vahe Kuzoyan, 41, whose fathers worked as contractors. They both moved to L.A. as young children in the 1980s — Mahdessian from Iran and Kuzoyan from Armenia.

At an opening bell ceremony, Kuzoyan, the company’s president, called the trading debut “a very special day for ServiceTitan, but more importantly it’s an incredible milestone for this very special industry.”

The event also turned into a celebration of the founders’ parents, who rang the opening bell. “Our parents came to this country with no language, no money, and it was through this industry they were able to achieve the American dream,” Kuzoyan said.

ServiceTitan employed 2,870 workers as of July 31 at its Glendale headquarters and offices elsewhere in the U.S. and internationally. Competitors include BuildOps, Housecall Pro, Jobber and other companies that charge subscriptions for their web-based business management software.

The company previously raised about $1.4 billion from venture firms, including Iconiq Growth, Bessemer Venture Partners and Battery Ventures. The company had filed confidential paperwork for an $18-billion IPO in 2022, according to Business Insider, but didn’t proceed when the market froze up.

ServiceTitan reported revenue of $614 million in the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31, up nearly a third from a year earlier, and an operating loss of $195 million, 28% less than in fiscal 2023. It had about $147 million in cash and equivalents on hand as of Jan. 31 and was carrying $175 million in long-term net debt.

The company’s share structure will ensure that control remains with the co-founders. They are retaining all of ServiceTitan’s Class B shares, which are entitled to 10 votes each when shareholders make decisions about the company’s leadership.

Lead underwriters on the IPO are Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Citigroup.

If your bank account regularly flirts with negative balances, or you’re just bad at keeping track of your debit card swipes, you’ve probably felt the sting of one of the banking industry’s favorite charges: overdraft fees.

Thanks to a rule finalized Thursday by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, those fees could drop sharply next year — provided the rule isn’t overturned by Congress or the courts before it goes into effect Oct. 1.

U.S. banks and credit unions opposed the rule, and four of their trade groups filed suit to block it hours after the final rule was announced. One of the groups, the American Bankers Assn., asserted the rule will prompt banks to offer less overdraft protection, which prevents overdrawn checks from bouncing and debit card transactions from being declined.

That protection comes at a price, though, in the form of overdraft fees of about $27 each time a customer withdraws more than their checking account could bear, Bankrate.com reported in August. Last year, according to the CFPB, banks collected about $5.8 billion worth of fees for overdrafts and non-sufficient funds — that is, when a check bounces or a payment is declined.

The CFPB rule is one of several efforts by the Biden administration to attack the estimated $90 billion collected annually in “junk” fees, or hidden charges that have no relation to the costs incurred. Others include a CFPB rule to cut late fees on credit card payments, a Transportation Department rule limiting fees on airline tickets and a Federal Trade Commission proposal taking broad aim at fees charged by ticketing companies, hotels and other service providers.

Under the overdraft rule, large banks and credit unions would have three options when setting fees: They could charge an amount based on the cost of the service, including losses from it; they could charge $5 per overdraft; or they could charge an amount that would generate a profit, but only if they disclosed the interest rate and other terms in advance and sent periodic statements to customers. The third option treats overdraft protection as a form of short-term lending, which technically it is.

Banks and credit unions with $10 billion or less in assets are exempt from the rule.

According to the CFPB, overdraft protection began decades ago as a courtesy that banks offered to customers who had to wait days for paper checks to clear. But as debit cards became more prevalent, banks and credit unions started generating significant profits from those charges. In California, state data show that some credit unions generate more than half their net income from overdraft fees.

Consumer advocates have been pushing for limits on “predatory” overdraft fees for decades. The fees are coming “overwhelmingly from low-income and a little bit from moderate-income consumers,” who are “by and large living paycheck to paycheck,” said Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California. “That’s what we find just wholly unacceptable.”

The CFPB has found that less than 10% of consumers pay nearly 80% of the fees, incurring 10 or more charges a year. Since the pandemic began in 2020, though, banks’ revenue from those fees and “non-sufficient funds” charges — incurred when a bank refuses to cover an overdraft — has dropped sharply, partly because of regulators’ scrutiny.

All the same, the bureau estimates that the rule could save consumers up to $5 billion a year, or $225 per household that incurs overdraft fees.

“In practice, overdraft fees have functioned as high-cost credit, so it only makes sense to regulate excessive fees as such,” said Mike Litt, director of the Public Interest Research Group’s consumer campaign. “The CFPB’s rule makes overdraft fees more reasonable and in line with the actual costs to banks.”

The bankers association was not so sanguine, saying the bureau should have held off until the Trump administration takes over. In former President Trump’s first term, his appointees at the CFPB vastly scaled back its rulemaking efforts.

“By taking this action, the Bureau has once again chosen to prioritize demonizing highly regulated and transparent bank fees over its mission to help consumers,” Rob Nichols, president and chief executive of the American Bankers Assn., said in a statement. “This rule, and the government price controls that accompany it, will make it significantly harder for banks to offer this valuable service to their customers, including those who have few other options to cover essential payments.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks to American Bankers Assn. President and Chief Executive Rob Nichols on March 21, 2023.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

Nichols said Americans have made it clear in surveys that they don’t want overdraft protection to go away. He also argued that the bureau didn’t have the legal authority to cap the price of overdraft fees, adding that the rule “should not be allowed to go into effect.”

Nadine Chabrier, senior policy and litigation counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, responded that banks can continue offering overdraft protection as a form of credit, but they’ll have to comply with the same rules that apply to other types of credit. According to Chabrier, the new rule keeps pace with the change in overdraft protection as paper checks have been replaced with instant debits.

The lawsuit from the banks and credit unions, which was filed in Mississippi, claims the CFPB exceeded its statutory authority in applying the federal Truth in Lending Act to overdraft protection services. It also argues that several key aspects of the rule are arbitrary and capricious, and asks the court to declare the rule illegal in its entirety.

Another test for the CFPB rule is likely to be from the Republican-controlled Congress. Under the Congressional Review Act, members will have 60 days after the rule is formally submitted to introduce a resolution to disapprove it. The resolution cannot be filibustered, and needs just a simple majority in the House and Senate to pass.

Other protections previously adopted by the CFPB will remain in place regardless of what happens to the new rule. An important one is that consumers must opt in to overdraft protection, so they will know that overdrafts will be allowed — but will carry a fee. Another is guidance issued in 2022 instructing banks not to process debit-card transactions and deposits in an order that would generate unexpected overdrafts.

California lawmakers enacted two measures this year to provide further protection for consumers against overdraft and non-sufficient funds fees. Senate Bill 1075 limits state-chartered banks and credit unions from charging overdraft fees larger than the amount set by the CFPB or $14, whichever is lower. If the CFPB’s rule is blocked, that law will continue to apply to state-chartered institutions.

Another law, Assembly Bill 2017, bars state-chartered banks and credit unions from charging non-sufficient funds fees on debit-card transactions that are declined because the account is overdrawn.