The Red Sox’ 2018 division title banner that was recovered on McGrath Highway in Somerville Monday has been returned in exchange for nothing.

A team spokeswoman told The Boston Globe‘s Travis Anderson the banner was brought into Fenway Park Wednesday afternoon. Those who delivered the lost item received no form of compensation, she said, despite the wishes of the 44-year-old Malden man who had initially located the banner.

In an interview with the Globe earlier Wednesday, Louie Iacuzzi said he had planned to return the misplaced memento that he says he accidentally stumbled upon Monday morning after spotting an unidentified object in the roadway. The return would just have to come at a cost.


“We want to return it, we’re trying to do the right thing, but I’m not just going to hand it to them, know what I mean?” Iacuzzi told Anderson. “We don’t know what we want. We want to return it, 100 percent, but we would like to get something.”

The Red Sox can clinch the AL East with a win over the New York Yankees Wednesday evening. Though the game will be played in the Bronx, the organization plans to unfurl the commemorative banner outside Fenway Park should the Sox win. If the missing banner had not been returned, Tony Lafuente, owner of Flagraphics, said his company had already produced a replica that would be ready to go.

“We already have a new banner made,” Lafuente told Anderson. “I’ve been doing work for the Boston Red Sox since 1992. Nothing ever happened like this.”

Lafuente also told Anderson that Iacuzzi and his friends “should be ashamed of themselves,” saying “those guys stole my banner.”

Iacuzzi, on the other hand, said he was just trying to “do the right thing.”

“If I didn’t pick it up, a hundred people would have ran over it,” he said. “I don’t want a million dollars. I don’t need a million dollars. All I wanted was to maybe bring my family, my friends to a [expletive] baseball game, maybe meet a player.”