The Baseball

by Zack Hample

  That fan was Steve Bartman.

  Alou flung his glove in disgust, and the crowd directed its wrath at Bartman, who had to be escorted out by stadium security for his own safety. When play resumed, the Marlins rallied for eight runs and put the game away.

  Poor Bartman. Not only did half a dozen police cars have to gather outside his home that night to protect him and his family, but things got worse the next day after the Cubs blew their lead in Game 7 and failed to reach the World Series. Bartman became an instant scapegoat for generations of disgruntled Cubs fans, received death threats, had to change his phone number, and was forced into hiding. Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich suggested that he enter the witness protection program, while Florida governor Jeb Bush offered him asylum. Bartman proceeded to turn down interview requests and endorsement deals, and he eventually rejected a $25,000 offer to autograph a photo of himself at a sports memorabilia convention.

  Here’s where it gets weird.

  Several months later, a successful restaurateur named Grant DePorter bought the infamous foul ball at an auction for $113,824. DePorter, hoping to rid the Cubs of their curse, recruited Michael Lantieri, an Academy Award–winning special effects expert, to blow up the ball at Harry Caray’s restaurant. The stunt was covered live on CNN, ESPN, and MSNBC and was written up by more than 4,000 newspapers. Then, a year later, at a much less publicized event, DePorter used the remnants of the ball to make a dish he named “Foul Ball Spaghetti.” What remained of the ball was boiled; the steam was captured and distilled and added to the recipe.

  JEFFREY MAIER

  Jeffrey Maier was the most infamous baseball fan before Bartman, and he attained his notoriety by doing the same thing: reaching out of the stands and interfering with a ball that was still in play. Luckily for Maier, who was just 12 years old at the time, he was treated as a hero because his interference happened to help the home team. And not just any team—the New York Yankees.

  It was October 9, 1996—Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. The Yankees were trailing the Baltimore Orioles, 4–3, with one out in the bottom of the eighth, when Derek Jeter spanked a deep drive toward the short porch in right field. Orioles right fielder Tony Tarasco reached the blue padded wall as the ball was descending and leaped to make the catch—but he never got the chance because Maier stuck out his glove and deflected the ball back into the stands.2 Right-field umpire Rich Garcia ruled it a home run, prompting Tarasco and Orioles manager Davey Johnson to argue like mad. And they were right—slow-motion replays indicated that the ball would not have cleared the wall if not for Maier—but the bad call stood, and the Yankees won the game (and eventually the World Series) in extra innings. The Orioles filed an official protest, and even though Garcia admitted that there was fan interference, the protest was denied by American League president Gene Budig. Maier appeared on national talk shows and was given the key to New York City by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

  RED SOX WORLD SERIES BALLS

  When Red Sox first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz caught the final out of the 2004 World Series, he found an extra way to get his name in the papers: by deciding to keep the ball for himself. Mientkiewicz, a former Gold Glove winner who had entered the game as a defensive replacement for David Ortiz in the bottom of the seventh, felt that he deserved to keep it since he caught it. Red Sox fans and management disagreed. Their team had finally overcome “the Curse of the Bambino”3 and won its first championship in 86 years. In their minds, this was one of the most important balls in the history of the sport, and it belonged in the team’s museum. Mientkiewicz held out, and as the negative media attention intensified, he joked to a Boston Globe reporter that the ball was his “retirement fund.” Or was he joking? On the same day he caught it, Barry Bonds’s 700th career home run ball sold for $804,129 through an online auction.

  How did the Mientkiewicz saga end? It was easy. First the Red Sox traded him to the Mets for a minor leaguer. Then they filed a lawsuit against him. Then they dropped the charges when he agreed to let an independent mediator settle the dispute. Finally he lent the ball to the Sox for a year and then donated it to the Hall of Fame.

  When Boston won the World Series again in 2007, a whole new controversy erupted over the final-out ball. This time it ended up in the hands of catcher Jason Varitek, who initially said he planned to return it to the team, but later admitted that he gave it to reliever Jonathan Papelbon. When the team asked Papelbon for the ball, he claimed that his dog ate it.

  “He plays with baseballs like they are his toys,” said the pitcher of his bulldog, Boss. “He jumped up one day on the counter and snatched it. He likes rawhide. He tore that thing to pieces.”

  Papelbon vowed to keep what was left of the ball, but later told the New England Sports Network that he’d thrown it out. “It’s in the garbage in Florida somewhere,” he said.

  Team officials took his word and did not file charges.

  BARRY BONDS HOME RUN BALLS

  It wasn’t just the steroids that caused controversy for Barry Bonds. On four separate occasions, it was the product of his alleged steroid use—the home run balls themselves—that created a buzz.

  73RD HOME RUN OF 2001 When Mark McGwire hit 70 home runs in 1998 to break the single-season record, his final home run ball sold for more than $3 million. Three years later, when Bonds surpassed him by hitting 73 homers, the final ball ended up in court. Video replays showed a fan making the catch in the tip of his glove, but after the ensuing melee in the right-field stands of what was then called Pacific Bell Park, a different fan held up the ball and was quickly escorted to safety by security personnel. The first fan, Alex Popov, sued the other fan, Patrick Hayashi, for ownership of the ball, claiming that Hayashi had stolen the prized souvenir from him. Fourteen months after number 73 had been hit, the judge ordered the men to sell the ball and split the money. Comic book mogul Todd McFarlane (who had bought the McGwire ball) paid $517,500 for it—far less than Popov needed to cover his legal costs. Hayashi’s lawyers went pro bono, and a full-length documentary called Up for Grabs was made about the whole ordeal.

  700TH CAREER HOME RUN Six months before Bonds hit his 700th career homer, a fan in Los Angeles purchased every ticket in the right-field pavilion for two of the season’s last three Giants games at Dodger Stadium—6,458 tickets in all. The fan, a 28-year-old investment banker named Michael Mahan, hoped that Bonds would hit the historic blast during one of those contests, but unfortunately for him, the Giants slugger connected two weeks too soon. Unfortunately for the Dodgers, who had offered a reduced group rate on the seats, Mahan resold thousands of the tickets for a profit.

  Up for Grabs is the best documentary ever made about a baseball. (Photo Credit 1.2)

  On September 17, 2004, when Bonds connected on number 700, the milestone ball landed in the left-center-field bleachers in San Francisco. Steve Williams, the man who snagged it, had two separate lawsuits filed against him by fans who claimed that he’d stolen it from them during the scrum. One of those fans, an accomplished Bay Area ballhawk named Alex Patino, insisted that he had possession of the ball after sitting on it. Because of the lack of evidence (and perhaps the absurdity of the claim), the judge dismissed the charges and allowed Williams to sell the ball.

  Barry Bonds’s 756th home run ball was “branded” with an asterisk carved into the cowhide. (Photo Credit 1.3)

  756TH CAREER HOME RUN On August 7, 2007, Bonds launched his record-breaking 756th home run toward the right-center-field bleachers at San Francisco’s AT&T Park, sparking such a wild melee for the ball that a fan in a wheelchair was knocked over and an usher nearly died from an asthma attack. Fashion designer Marc Ecko ended up buying the ball for $752,467 and creating a website where fans could vote for its fate. Eight days and 10 million votes later, the public decided to “brand” the historic ball with an asterisk and send it to the Hall of Fame. (The other two options included sending the ball sans brand to the Hall or putting it on a rocket and launching it into space.)
Bonds responded by threatening to boycott his own induction if the Hall accepted the branded ball. Gilbert Arenas, an All-Star point guard on the NBA’s Washington Wizards, offered to buy the ball from Ecko for $800,000. Ultimately Ecko branded the ball and donated it to Cooperstown after a lengthy negotiating process.

  762ND CAREER HOME RUN Ever since an FBI sting in the mid-1990s nabbed dozens of high-profile memorabilia counterfeiters, specially marked balls, often with invisible infrared markings, have been used whenever a player has approached a major record or milestone. On September 5, 2007, Bonds hit his final major league home run—number 762—against the Rockies at Coors Field, but the historic ball was unmarked. Still, under normal circumstances it could have been authenticated on the spot, but because two fans each emerged from the scuffle with a ball in their hands, Major League Baseball officials wanted nothing to do with it.

  It turned out that when Bonds stepped to the plate, one of the fans was already holding a ball that he’d caught during pregame warm-ups. That ball, which the fan wisely dropped in order to grab the real home run, was subsequently snagged by a 58-year-old season-ticket holder named Robert Harmon. At the time, there were three weeks remaining in the season; everyone assumed that Bonds would hit at least a few more homers, so no one made a big deal about number 762 or the unnamed fan who grabbed it—until the regular season ended. Then the official manhunt began. One media outlet even issued an all-points bulletin for the owner of the ball to come forward, prompting five phony claims and a follow-up story two months later reporting that the real owner was still at large.

  Jameson Sutton, an unemployed 24-year-old from Boulder, Colorado, finally came out of hiding and revealed that he had snagged the controversial ball. Then, thanks to Harmon’s unlikely admission that his own ball was a fake, Sutton sent his ball to auction, where it sold for $376,612—money he desperately needed to pay for his ailing father’s medical bills. (There was one twist: Sutton had pulled a Jeffrey Maier by reaching out of the stands and interfering with the ball. The play should not have been ruled a home run. Good thing the umpires blew the call.)

  HANK AARON’S FINAL HOME RUN

  On July 20, 1976, in an otherwise meaningless game between two last-place teams in Milwaukee, Hank Aaron belted his 755th career home run. At the time, no one gave it much thought because there were still two and a half months remaining in the season. The man who snagged the ball even offered to return it to Aaron—for free—under one condition: that he be allowed to meet the future Hall of Famer and hand it over himself. Given the fact that this man, a 29-year-old named Richard Arndt, worked for the Brewers as a part-time groundskeeper, his request could have easily been granted. Well, not only did the Brewers refuse to let Arndt meet Aaron, and not only did they fire him the next day for refusing to return the meaningful item, but the team also docked him $5 from his final paycheck for the cost of the ball. After the season ended, Aaron tried to buy it from Arndt, who declined the offer, moved to Albuquerque, tucked the ball in a safety deposit box, and wasn’t heard from for more than two decades.

  At some point in the late 1990s, Arndt snuck the ball into a baseball card show and handed it to an unsuspecting Aaron, who autographed it and handed it right back. Soon after, as the ball was headed to auction, Aaron’s representatives contacted Arndt and made a lowball offer. Arndt once again refused, ended up selling the ball to a private collector for $650,000, and donated 25 percent of the proceeds to Aaron’s charitable foundation.4

  SAMMY SOSA’S 62ND HOME RUN OF 1998

  Before Mark McGwire bashed all those home runs in 1998, the single-season record belonged to Roger Maris, who went deep 61 times in 1961. Luckily for McGwire, his record-breaking 62nd home run ball was returned to him by a groundskeeper in St. Louis. Five days later, when the red-hot Sammy Sosa eclipsed Maris with a 480-foot blast onto Chicago’s Waveland Avenue, the precious ball went to court. What set this case apart from other ball-related disputes was that the plaintiff was a legendary ballhawk named Moe Mullins.

  Mullins, a 47-year-old truck driver who had reeled in more than 3,100 baseballs over the previous three decades, insisted that he had Sosa’s homer in his possession before it was ripped out of his hands by a violent mob. Numerous witnesses backed up his claim, and several local residents painted the number “62” in their driveway along with the slogan, “Give it to Moe.” Still, there was no way to prove that the fan who ended up with the ball had acquired it illegally. That fan, a mortgage broker named Brendan Cunningham, said he simply found himself in a pile of people and reached down for the ball when it rolled near him. Mullins dropped the lawsuit two weeks later when Cunningham vowed to return the ball to Sosa.

  Waveland Avenue, seen here in the late 1990s, saw far more home runs before the bleacher expansion of 2006. (Photo Credit 1.4)

  RYAN HOWARD’S 200TH CAREER HOME RUN

  This wasn’t your typical lawsuit. No one disputed the fact that Jennifer Valdivia snagged Ryan Howard’s 200th career home run ball, but when the Phillies reportedly used shady tactics to get the ball back from her, they ended up getting sued.

  Valdivia was only 12 years old when she grabbed the milestone ball on July 16, 2009, at Land Shark Stadium.5 Because of its additional historical significance—Howard hit 200 homers in the fewest number of games—Valdivia was approached by a Marlins representative and taken to the Phillies’ clubhouse with her 17-year-old brother. Once they got there, she was told that if she handed over the ball, Howard would autograph it for her later and that she could come back and meet him after the game.

  That never happened.

  When Valdivia returned after the Phillies’ 4–0 victory, Howard wasn’t there, and she was given a different (brand-new) ball with his signature. And when Valdivia’s mother was told by her coworkers the following day just how special number 200 was, she took action. First she called the Phillies and asked them to return it, and when the team refused she got a lawyer. The lawyer called the Phillies. The Phillies told him to contact Howard’s agent. The agent rebuffed him. So the family filed a lawsuit, and wouldn’t you know it? The ball was returned two days later with a letter of authenticity.

  BIG MONEY OPPORTUNITIES

  In April 2001, when Reds first baseman Sean Casey hit the first home run ever at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, the ball bounced back onto the field and was then absentmindedly tossed back into the crowd by Pirates center fielder Adrian Brown. A month later, the fan who grabbed that ball sold it for $9,400.

  Not bad. But it was nothing compared to a ball that had made history 15 years earlier. You’ve probably seen the replays a thousand times. It was Game 6 of the 1986 World Series at Shea Stadium. Bottom of the 10th inning. Two outs. Winning run on second. Mookie Wilson hit a weak grounder down the first-base line, and the ball trickled through Bill Buckner’s legs. Mayhem. Heartbreak. Jubilation. Right-field umpire Ed Montague retrieved the ball, then handed it to a Mets employee named Arthur Richman, who gave it to Wilson—who signed it and gave it back. Six years later, Richman sent the ball to auction, where actor Charlie Sheen bought it for $93,500.6 At the time, it was the most that anyone had paid for a baseball, but now it wouldn’t even crack the top 10:

  1 The Buffalo Bisons were a National League team from 1879 to 1885. They moved to the International League in 1886 and have been a minor league franchise ever since.

  2 Let the record show, once and for all, that Maier did not “catch” the ball. Not only was he glorified for breaking a rule, but the media mistakenly credited him with having athleticism.

  3 If you don’t know what this is, pick up a copy of Watching Baseball Smarter and turn to page 203.

  4 Arndt claimed he was pressured into donating the money by Aaron’s representatives—that if he didn’t make the contribution, Aaron himself was going to challenge the ball’s authenticity. Arndt initially agreed to donate 42.5 percent, but Aaron accepted the smaller amount after the ball failed to meet its $850,000 reserve price at auction.

  5 Home of
the Florida Marlins, previously known as Dolphin Stadium, Dolphins Stadium, Pro Player Stadium, Pro Player Park, and Joe Robbie Stadium—and now named Sun Life Stadium. (And the name will probably change three more times by the time you read this.)

  6 Sheen outbid Keith Olbermann, who walked away at $85,000.

  CHAPTER 2

  FOUL BALL LORE

  CONSECUTIVE FOUL BALLS

  In the 19th century, foul balls weren’t sexy like they are today. For the most part, in fact, they were just plain annoying. Not only were fans forced to return them, and not only was the game delayed each time a foul ball had to make its way back to the field, but the action itself was meaningless. Foul balls were essentially non-events because they didn’t count as strikes. As a result, carefree batters intentionally hit fouls in order to wear out the opposing pitcher and wait for pitches they could hammer.

  In 1901 the National League made a dramatic attempt to curtail this practice by instituting a rule that turned foul balls into strikes—and it worked. Batters weren’t nearly as eager to hit foul balls, and pitchers regained some of their much-needed advantage.1 The American League adopted the foul-strike rule two years later.

  Although foul ball stats were not consistently documented until pitch counts began ruling the sport, there are several known cases of extreme fouls—not surprisingly, from before the foul-strike rule took effect. During a game in 1897, Hall of Famer Billy Hamilton, then a member of the Boston Beaneaters, hit 29 in a row. Later that season, Hamilton led off a game against Cy Young by hitting the first three pitches foul. Young responded by walking toward Hamilton and telling him, “I’m putting the next pitch right over the heart of the plate. If you foul it off, the next one goes right in your ear.”