Uproar over record-breaking ball a joke
Posted: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 11:20 AM
News item, courtesy of the Associated Press:
SAN FRANCISCO - The prospect of a melee in the stands prompted a prominent auction house on Monday to withdraw a $1 million bounty on Barry Bonds' career-record homer baseball.
I’d accuse Heritage Auction Galleries of Texas of an unexpected attack of common sense in deciding not to lay out a million bucks in cold cash for Bonds’ record home-run ball. But to accuse anyone involved in the memorabilia market of a quality so utterly useless in the business would just be wrong.
According to the story, the auctioneers withdrew the offer after meeting with security personnel at the Giants’ AT&T Park. Security is understandably worried. If you’ll remember back to 2001, when Bonds hit the single-season record of 73, the courts had to untangle the issue of who actually caught the baseball.
There was a wild scramble for that one. And, as much as baseball fans say they won’t recognize Bonds as the legitimate record holder, they’ll still be packing the bleachers and McCovey Cove at the park as Bonds closes in, their disapproval neatly trumped by the prospect of catching the ball and getting rich.
This is why Heritage’s move isn’t going to help security issues any more than another 30,000 soldiers are going to secure Baghdad for democracy. The fans don’t need an auction house offering big money to inflict bodily injury on each other if that’s what it takes to come out with the ball. They’re going to do it anyway.
My guess is that Heritage is more worried about getting sued by the survivors of the scrum. This being America, someone who doesn’t get the ball but comes away with a severe bruise or a laceration big enough to require a medium-sized Band-Aid would have sued Heritage for causing his injuries with its rash offer.
From my standpoint, if you’re nuts enough to go into the stands when Bonds is closing in, you deserve whatever happens to you. You’re there to fight for a baseball and get rich. You know what you’re in for.
I find it amusing that even as fans are circling likely record-breaking dates on their calendars and tracking down tickets, Bonds himself is virtually unmarketable. That, at least, is according to another story on msnbc.com:
“Steve Rosner, co-founder of 16W Marketing, a sports marketing firm in Rutherford, N.J., told Bloomberg News that the drug suspicions are costing the San Francisco Giants slugger perhaps $10 million per year in endorsements.”
So it goes in the world. Bonds is worth nothing, but the baseball he hit could be worth millions. The difference is that the greed of the ball hawks is good, and that of Bonds is bad.
What I love is the tone of these articles. According to baseball-reference.com, not including this year, Bonds has made $172.7 million playing baseball. Yet this Rosner fellow is trying to get us to feel Bonds’ pain at being shut out of another $10 million in endorsements.
Donald Trump may believe that you keep score by the number of things you own, but I don’t. Who cares how much Bonds does or doesn’t make in endorsements? Who really cares how much he makes for playing a game?
Your value is what the people who write the checks say it is. It’s the same with objects. The auctioneer was saying a baseball was going to be worth one million dollars. The sports marketer says that Bonds is worth nothing.
In my book, Bonds is worth more than the ball, but that’s only because I can write a lot more about a human being than I can about a ball of yarn wrapped in cowhide.
