Thursday, September 27, 2007

What Do You Do When You're Branded?

The votes have all been counted. If you'll remember, Mark Ecko, who bought Barry Bond's record-setting home run ball at auction, left it to the public to decide the fate of the ball. The choices were to send it to the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York, send it to Cooperstown with an asterisk branded into it, or launch it into space. The public has spoken. The ball is getting a brand.

The final tally: 47% said brand it, 34% said bestow it unmarked, and only 19% chose the space option. Or, as the website figured it, "80 percent of voters believed the ball should go to Cooperstown (47% opting to mark the ball; 34% without), and two thirds felt that doubts surrounding the record needed to be recognized (47% for the asterisk; 19% for space)."

1 comment:

Carly said...

You know, it's so strange. As you know I am just across the bay from San Francisco, so all over the Bay Area we have had Barry this and Barry that. I have been trying to keep an open mind, but I have so many questions that to date, can't or won't be answered. What gets to me sometimes, isn't so much Barry's conduct, as the fans conduct. When there was a chance of catching his record breaking ball, McCovey Cove was filled with folks in row boats just waiting, heck, in man on the street interviews, Barry was, "The Man." When it was announced the other day that he wasn't coming back to the Giants, he was once again, "The Bum." It's the fairweather fans that make it all seem just a little more sad to me. Sad, and very unfortunate. I kinda wish it had just been sent to Cooperstown as an unmarked ball, and let history unfold with indisputable truth, whatever that eventual truth will be. Sigh.