A mansion custom-built in rural Maryland for baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. has found a buyer in Baltimore Orioles centerfielder Adam Jones.
Mr. Jones, 32, placed the highest bid at an auction for the hall of famer’s longtime residence in Reisterstown, northwest of Baltimore, The Athletic first reported.
Mr. Ripken, 57, purchased the 25-acre property in 1984, early in his professional career with the Orioles, and he subsequently commissioned the construction of a 21,890-square-foot mansion, an adjacent regulation-size baseball diamond and an indoor gym replete with facilities including a batting cage and basketball court.
Mr. Ripken has since moved to Annapolis, and he decided to sell the estate at a no-minimum, no-reserve auction last weekend after recent attempts to place it on the market ended unsuccessfully.
“We had eight bidders, registered bidders, and the house sold in 17 minutes,” said Wendy Oliver, business development director for DeCaro Auctions International, the group that managed the sale, The Baltimore Sun reported Friday.
The final selling price was not immediately disclosed, and Mr. Jones declined to comment on the transaction when asked repeatedly in the wake of placing the winning bid Saturday, the newspaper reported.
“It’s not a story. … I’m rich. I can buy houses if I want,” he said Thursday, The Sun reported.
The Ripken estate is “the highest selling home in Baltimore County this year,” Daniel DeCaro of DeCaro Auctions International wrote in a Mansion Global report, meaning Mr. Jones bid more than the $2.825 million spent on the area’s second-highest selling home in March.
Mr. Jones was picked in the first round of the 2003 major league draft by the Seattle Mariners, and he has traded to the Orioles in 2008. He is currently finishing the last year of a six-year, $85.5-million contract with the Orioles inked in 2012.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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