His life changed. A winning lottery ticket arrived. Tony Voda was ready.

He was going to be rich. He was going to be famous. Magic was happening, and as the baseball fell from the night sky, Tony Voda was ready to experience a miracle.

Shohei Ohtani was on his way to entering baseball’s 40-40 league last week at Chavez Ravine with a ninth-inning walk-off grand slam. It was one of the most dramatic hits in the long history of Dodger Stadium. This anonymous insurance analyst from Minneapolis was right in the middle of it.

“Up until the very last moment, against the beautiful black night sky, I can see the ball, it’s burned into my mind, this is happening, this is really happening,” Voda recalls. “The crowd is screaming but you don’t hear it, your senses shut down, tunnel vision sets in and all you can think about is, don’t screw this up.“

Then the unthinkable happened, an event that changed Tony Voda forever and made him a hero.

He blew it.

Shohei Ohtani hits a walk-off grand slam for the Dodgers against the Rays to join the 40-40 club.

There are countless videos of replays showing it with terrifying frequency.

He blew it.

“I had a life-changing event in my hands,” he said, “and I literally dropped the ball.”

So this doesn’t seem to be the usual homerun story of good luck and fortune, but a story of deep remorse and abiding regret.

Except for one turn that was as clear as Ohtani’s swing.

When Tony Voda thought he was cursed one Friday night, it turned out he was blessed.

For the man who will forever be known for one of the biggest fan mistakes in Dodger Stadium history, it wasn’t about what he lost, it was about what he gained.

Tony Voda waves before the game between the Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays at Dodger Stadium on August 23.

(Thanks to Tony Voda)

It looks so easy and natural on TV. But in real life, catching a home run ball is about as easy as catching a raindrop in a thunderstorm.

“The average fan has no idea,” said Matt Walker, one of the dozens of members of “Dodgerhawks,” a group of season ticket holders who gather at Dodger Stadium to try to hit home runs.

That is almost impossible.

“Do you get it right the first time because you’ve been following every throw? Are you on your phone? Is it hooking? Drawing? Is the wind a factor?” Walker explained. “The crowd is elbow to elbow and you’re usually getting pushed and shoved. Is it going over the wall, are you getting jammed, is the outfielder getting closer?”

Walker said the conditions for such a catch are terrible.

“Are you standing in spilled beer, water bottles, and loose peanut shells? Are the lights a factor? The sun?” he said. “Oh yeah, and that’s coming at over 100 miles an hour. And the whole thing lasts maybe three seconds.”

Tony Voda, 40, knows these truths. He has been chasing home run balls in stadiums across the country for 15 years and has caught exactly two.

“Home run balls are important to me because of that deep connection I had with the game as a kid,” he said. “You see them go up in the stands as a young kid and you want to not only be the one to hit them, but the one to have the souvenir.

“It is one of the few sports that is rarely played in the stands, but is coveted by many because of how elusive it is.”

It’s so elusive that Voda paid hundreds of dollars a few months ago for one of the Dodgers’ celebrated home run chairs along the outfield walls. He picked a random game against the Tampa Rays as part of an extended baseball tour of California.

He had no idea that Ohtani would be on the verge of becoming only the sixth player in baseball history to reach 40 home runs and 40 steals in a single season. He never imagined that Ohtani would steal his 40th base in the fourth inning and then come to bat with the bases loaded until the ninth inning with a chance to make history.

“I would have been happy if a Dodger junkyard had hit me,” he said. “And then this happened.”

This means that Ohtani throws the ball high towards the wall in the right center of the field.

That means the ball narrowly cleared the fence and headed straight for Voda’s rainbow-colored glove.

This means the ball bounces off Voda’s glove back into the field, where it is eventually picked up by outfielder Jose Siri and thrown back into the stands well out of Voda’s reach.

Grand slam. Grand shoe.

“Every fan’s worst nightmare,” Walker said.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hits a walk-off grand slam against the Tampa Bay Rays for his 40th home run of the season on August 23.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Gone was a chance to meet Ohtani and return the ball, which Voda said he would have done. Gone was a six-figure payday if Ohtani wouldn’t trade anything for the ball. Gone was the best moment of Voda’s baseball life.

He knew all this, and he knew it immediately. Watch the replay and notice that the moment the ball bounces off Voda’s glove, he puts his hands on his head with an expression of deep pain.

“Sheer shock, disbelief,” Voda said. “My heart sank.”

As he stood there, seething with pain, fully expecting the people in the pavilion to jeer and whistle at him, something strange happened.

His phone buzzed. It was Walker, who had met Voda with other Dodgerhawks before the game. He had already watched the replay and immediately wanted to console Voda.

“What just happened? What did I do?” Voda groaned into the phone.

“You did the best you could,” Walker told him. “You did everything you could.”

And sure enough, the replay shows a fan to Voda’s left knocking the pinky off his glove, inches before the ball landed. Just enough to prevent the ball from landing deep in the glove pocket.

“I guess it’s the ‘Minnesota Nice’ in me. I should have ejected that guy, but I just didn’t want to get in the way of another fan,” Voda said.

It was also notable that Voda refused to go to the edge of the fence, from where he could have shot the ball better.

“I didn’t want the fans to bother me and have the home run taken away, you mean it?” Voda said. “I was very careful.”

Too cautious? Maybe. But maybe not.

The sporting attitude with which Voda conducted himself was noticed not only by Walker, but also by the several fans who gathered around Voda when he took the first phone call.

“You could hear people around Tony as I was talking to him, and everyone was already comforting him,” Walker said. “It was like when he put his hands over his head, we all put our hands over our heads.”

The outpouring of support continued during the drone show that followed, with fans from all corners surrounding him, patting him on the back and sharing his regrets, with one fan even accompanying Voda to his car to offer his condolences for his misfortune. And then there were the words of encouragement from a stranger that he will never forget.

“A guy came up to me and just said, ‘Next time, poppa,’” Voda recalls. “Like he was giving me a pep talk.”

Dodger Stadium can be a moody place, especially when a ball is hit into the stands. When a fan catches an opposing team’s home run, the verbal pressure to throw the ball back can be deafening.

But that night, Dodger Stadium was a sympathetic, understanding place that filled Tony Voda with a warmth no other catch could match.

By the time he got back to his hotel, he had received dozens of text messages and a flurry of online support. There was no trolling. There was no insulting. There was just a sense of kinship among Dodger fans, who, it turns out, have been historically forgiving not only of the players but of each other.

“Catching the ball would have been potentially life-changing, but so were the lessons I learned from missing it,” Voda said. “I know it sounds cheesy and dumb, but even though I may have lost a ball, I got more love from Dodger fans than I knew I had, more love than I thought I deserved.”

Voda is back in Minneapolis now, but he hopes to return to Dodger Stadium one day, play for the Dodgerhawks, hit another home run spot, use his rainbow glove on a fly ball and pray again for a miracle, knowing he’s already seen one.

“I love LA,” he said.

Just before Ohtani threw his punch, a guard standing next to Voda wondered out loud if this match would have a cinematic ending.

That was true in every way, as Ohtani wasn’t the only one digging deep.

The same goes for humanity.