Balls

[Guest Edgy DC]

USA Today looks at the recent history of championship balls.

[G-Fafif]

Great article, E. The whole issue with Minky struck me as overwrought. The end of the '91 World Series, as great a World Series and as great a Game 7 as imaginable, came and went and nobody worried about such things. Such innocence.

As always, Dougie's good for a great quote:

]"And I was on that CNN crawl, sandwiched between the Laci Peterson murder trial and tsunami victims," Mientkiewicz says. "I didn't do anything wrong, but it's no fun when the whole world thinks the opposite. You would have thought I stole Ted Williams' body and wasn't going to give it back."

[metirish]

Yeah cool stuff....I figured Beckett was laid back but this is super cool...

]2003 � The final out: Marlins pitcher Josh Beckett fields a grounder from the Yankees' Jorge Posada and tags him out, giving Florida the series victory in Game 6 at New York. � Where's the ball? It has not left Beckett's glove. The glove and ball sat in his baseball bag in his garage for a couple of months after the World Series, but now the glove and ball are displayed in Beckett's home in Texas.

[Willets Point]

I still don't get the whole "ball that won the series" thing as if that ball has any more signifigance than any other ball used in the World Series. For 2004, as an example, I'd think that Johnny Damon's home run ball would be much more meaningful than the ball that participated in just one of 27 outs in that game. I know I'm alone in this. It's tough being an iconoclast.

[Theoldmole]

Great line from Minky.

[Guest mlbaseballtalk]

I think it was the whole uproar that Minky caused that was more funny. Especially listening to sports radio hosts

Basically split down the middle, on one side it was "How DARE the Red Sox pull this shit! Its HIS ball...ect" Thats mostly from pro-player/anti-labor types though

And of course the other argument fell on the "Who does he think he is? What did he contribute to the championship?" which kind of makes sense, along with the argument that this was actually a rare case of the player NOT giving up a piece of famous personal memorabillia for a team, or sport's historical archiving (i.e. turning down Cooperstown if they asked) Basically saying that in this instance Minky thought he was bigger than the Sox and baseball

[Guest Edgy DC]

But the article shows a long history of the lucky player who makes the last out pocketing the ball.

What's a pro-player/anti-labor type? That seems contradictory.

[Guest mlbaseballtalk]

Edgy DC wrote: But the article shows a long history of the lucky player who makes the last out pocketing the ball. Waht's a pro-player/anti-labor type? That seems contradictory.

1) Opps, meant anti-owners

Aren't the owners/comish usually called "labor" whenever CBA time comes around? For some reason I thought they were...

2) Yeah but I think the anti-Minky argument stems from the stance he took, granted it was meant as tounge-in-cheek and all, but the original hubbub about it made it seemed that Minky held the ball up for ransom, and this seemed to be the first known instance of a player publically saying he would not give up a personal piece of memorabillia for a team's or sport's usage




Steve