So who should keep the 73 ball? (1 Viewer)

Does allowing the guy who has the ball right now to keep it establish a dangerous precedent?
If someone near you caught a valuable ball, what would you do? Where do you draw the line?
Would you try to knock it out of his hand? Would you grab it?
Would you throw a punch? An elbow to the head?

Sounds like hockey in the stands!
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Who cares. It's just a ball, there's millions of them.
/Mike

Absolutely it should belong to the person who ends up with the ball. Of course you only have an issue when someone is breaking a record which normally doesnt happen very often. This problem only recently started when Big Mac and Sosa started the run to break the HR record. Especially when the gentlmen sold Mac's record ball for over a million dollars at auction. Now if you catch a record ball you better believe that someone is going to come at you. I would assume that your best bet would to be to raise your arms so you are on TV that way if you get mugged you have some recourse or proof that you had the ball first.
KyleS
[Edited last by KyleS on October 10, 2001 at 10:49 AM]

At almost every game of the year people bump into each other to get foul balls so its typical. You can imagine how much worse it gets when its a million dollar ball.
Who knows if this guy was the one to pull it out of his glove. With a fracas of 30 guys going after it I'd suspect that the guy who pulled it out or knocked it out of the other guys glove isn't even the one with the ball now.
Possesion is 9/10ths of the law isn't it?

Kyle-
the guy who originally caught the ball HAS proof, on videotape no less, that he caught it. Then he was mugged, and someone else came out of the pile with the ball.
The problem is the arcade design in RF, where Barry hit the 73rd, at PacBell is an open area (i.e., no seats, steps, railings, etc.) that was jam-packed with fans wanting to get that ball. In other stadiums, there would be a limited area and a much more limited number of fans that could "get" to the ball, since there's seats, aisles, railings, etc. in their way, and would preclude creating a scrum in an open area where the ball landed.
At PacBell, lots of guys stormed the guy who caught it, and either he coughed it up, or another guy snuck it out of his glove while he was piled upon. MLB didn't "show up" apparently, until the 2nd guy emerged from the scrum with the ball - and MLB then designated the 2nd guy as "the guy" with the 73rd HR ball. Sad, really.

Well, then I'd sue the crap out of both MLB and the guy who caught the ball.
And you can bet the contingency lawyers were lined up.
But nobody answered my question.
What would you do to get a million dollar ball away from somebody who caught it?

It's like a fumble in football. The first guy to touch the ball isn't always the guy that comes out of the pile with it. In that situation you gotta know that you're gonna get mugged. I saw the video last night on the news and there was a lot of white showing when it hit the glove so I'm not surprised that he lost the ball. He should've listened to his Little League coach and used 2 hands!

Give him a settlement for the replacement value of the ball: ~$10
(but make him pay his legal costs)
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Why don't they all just wait a few years when somebody breaks Bond's record and that ball just lost 50% of it's value..
Whatever happened to McGuire's ball now?
Jay
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quote: What would you do to get a million dollar ball away from somebody who caught it?[/quote]
I would do nothing because I would have no right to take it away.
I think this whole situation speaks volumes about our society today. How people can think it is ok to steal, and that is the correct word, some one else’s personal property is beyond me. After all once the balls landed in the first guys glove it was his property plain and simple.
By the way as Jay Leno pointed out last night, how would you like to be the guy who paid 3 million for Mac's record setter? That ball is now practically worthless, well not worthless but certainly not even worth 10k on the open market.
Since the record has been broken two times now in just three years this current ball will not be worth anywhere near 3 million dollars. People now believe the record will be broken every few years so why pay so much for the current ball? Of course as time passes and if the record stands for years the value of the ball should increase.
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[Edited last by Patrick_S on October 10, 2001 at 12:52 PM]

Todd McFarlane of Spawn action figures (and many other lines of actions figures) is the guy who paid $3 million for Big Mac's record setting baseball. He might have got enough out of the ball due to his little "marketing of McFarlane" toys and showing the baseball on the same tour across the country a few years ago.
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The official story I've heard is something out of a cartoon. The guy caught the ball in his glove but on the very end. A few other jump him to try and get it and they pile up on him. The ball rolls out of the pile onto the ground. A bystander picks up the ball and says, is this the ball? Apparently the person who picked up the ball was not in the melee, but picked it up. Since he may not have seen who caught it first, it would be dumb to ask if anyone else if they caught it, I'm sure they would all say yes.
The guy who lost it was his own fault for not being more cautious. He should have tucked it towards himself like a football.

That guy was mugged. He clearly caught the ball and it was stolen from him. No matter how the other guy came into this stolen property, he has no right to it.

Threaten to cut the ball into two pieces. Offer one half to each person. The person who really loves the ball won't be able to stand the ball being harmed. This person deserves the ball. Give the ball to this person. Don't cut the ball into two pieces.

Calvin, you've been reading your bible lately, haven't you?
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No of course not, no one DESERVES to be mugged. but if your among a crowd of several hundred people and an object heading towards you worth over 1 million dollars, do you really think you should have that attitude? Maybe he's the kind of guy that walks through an inner city with hundred dollar bills sticking out of his pockets at midnight screaming I have money and then be shocked someone came out and mugged him.
If that case is true, then the guy who dropped #72 can sue to get that one back since he did catch it, but dropped out of his hands. Can he sue Marquis Grissom for taking the ball and not giving it back?