Painting Famous Artist Gave to MLB Pitcher As Thank-You Auctioned Off for Six Figures

Waite Hoyt pitched for seven MLB teams over the course of a 21-year career from 1918 to '38, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. Diego Rivera was one of 20th Century art's towering figures—the Mexican icon who brought mural art onto the world's biggest stages.

On the surface, these facts would seem to be unrelated—but on Wednesday, they fused together to create a financial windfall.

A painting given to Hoyt by Rivera as a thank-you for baseball tickets in 1932 has sold at auction for $190,000, according to a Thursday morning report from Larry Holder of The Athletic.

The painting is titled Mercado de flores (Mujer cargando un nino), which roughly translates to Flower Market (Woman Carrying a Child). According to a blurb written for Sotheby's by Tim Manners—the co-author of Hoyt's posthumous memoir, released in 2024—the pitcher and Rivera are said to have crossed paths in 1932, when Hoyt was playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and Rivera displayed the fresco Man at the Crossroads at what is now 30 Rock.

Citing "family lore," Manners wrote that Hoyt gave Rivera tickets to see the Dodgers and Rivera—learning that Hoyt had begun painting extensively in retirement—gifted him Mercado de flores (Mujer cargando un nino) in 1951.

Collaborations between baseball and fine art are rare, but they do happen. Banksy and Shohei Ohtani, we're ready when you are.

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