WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU CAUGHT NO. 62

Home run history can be conceived in a small house in Alabama or a boarding school in Baltimore. It can be carried by a jowly partyer or crew-cutted loner. It can fly cheerily, trudge painfully, limp dramatically.

But ultimately, there is only one way home run history can actually be made.

By a baseball.

A $9.95 baseball.

And it must soar far from the game itself to do it.

This baseball, while belonging to one man’s lifetime of work or moment of courage, could end up anywhere.

A street. A bullpen. A fountain. In the rough hands of a grandfather. On the pudding-stained palms of a child.

With the Cardinals’ Mark McGwire and the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa close to recording such a hit, today’s question, dear reader, is this:

What would you do if No. 62 was caught by you?

It’s late September, you have used the last of your vacation to fly to St. Louis, handed the last of your savings to a scalper for a ticket in the Busch Stadium left-field seats.

McGwire has 61 home runs, tying the major league single-season record. You are guessing he will break that record on the first night of the final home stand against some doomed minor league pitcher from the Montreal Expos.

Third inning, two out, one big swing, and you guessed right.

The ball soars from McGwire’s bat toward your section, higher, higher, then slowly drops, a small speck growing bigger, bigger, bigger . . .

You stand and leap, everyone for six sections stands and leaps, elbowing and scratching and kicking for the greatest jump ball in sports history.

Then, smack. Through the long arms of the greatest hustlers and sandlot kings and street players of the 20th century--all of whom have been waiting a lifetime for this chance--the ball sails into your outstretched hands.

You cradle it to your chest and are immediately tackled to the pavement, repeatedly kicked and punched and wrestled with by those who will never again be this close to winning the lottery.

Within seconds, two young guys emerge from the dog pile with baseballs, browned and scuffed and containing the perfect signature of National League President Leonard Coleman.

Each of them holds up his ball, screaming, claiming that this is the home run ball, not something they just brought from home in hopes of fooling their way into immortality.

Fortunately for you, the Cardinals were prepared for this day. The stands are filled with policemen, and all of them saw that the lucky fan was you.

You are helped to your feet, immediately escorted downstairs to the first-aid station for treatment of several cuts and two nasty welts.

As the paramedic is blotting your face with ice packs, you let her hold the ball.

Then she slowly smiles and becomes the first to ask a question that will haunt you the rest of your life.

“So, what are you going to do with it?”

Ask any of your friends that question today, and see how long it takes them to answer. Judging from my unofficial survey, the average time will be, like, two days.

Nobody can answer it right away because, right away, everyone realizes it is not about a baseball. It is about you, your values, your feelings on integrity and accomplishment and sportsmanship and, yeah, how much money you have racked up on those credit cards.

When the question was posed at the dinner table the other night, a little girl answered, “I would throw it back to the players, of course. How can they keep playing without a ball?”

I gently tried to explain to her that unless she were a drunken Cub fan, that is probably the only thing she wouldn’t do.

Your other options:

Sell it for $1 million.

Yeah, you’d probably get that much, considering Eddie Murray’s 500th home run was sold by a fan for $500,000.

The deal probably would have to be cut with some weird collector, because McGwire has said he’s not paying a penny for the thing.

Because of all the exposure surrounding the home run chase, major league baseball probably has made enough money off McGwire that the New York office could cut you the check and still be ahead.

What the heck. This game has put you, all of us, through some terrible times lately. Consider this overdue payment for your suffering.

When friends call you an opportunistic mercenary with no love for the game, say, yeah, like the people who run it.

Walk to the Cardinal clubhouse and hand it to McGwire.

That would be the easiest thing to do. He would shake your hand, give you an autograph, blow past you for a national TV interview, and that would be that.

This also would be the easiest way for the ball to get into the Hall of Fame, as few players have ever refused to donate their landmark items to Cooperstown.

The biggest drawback here is that while channel surfing late one night about 10 years from now, there is a chance you could come upon a very large, very wrinkled redhead trying to hawk the thing on QVC.

Just, uh, keep it.

Put it on your mantel next to your bowling trophies. Show it off at business meetings. Every year on the date you caught it, throw the ball a birthday party.

The problem here is that one guy already has tried something like this, and probably regrets it.

The fellow who caught the football used in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 1972 Immaculate Reception play never found anybody to pay him what he wanted, so he keeps it locked up in his suburban home, hires security guards when he transports it anywhere, and is generally regarded as a spoilsport who is keeping the people of Pittsburgh from enjoying an important part of their history.

So what would you do?

Here’s what I would do.

I would not sell it. Too cheesy. The entire $1 million couldn’t wash off your new coat of sleaze.

I would not give it to McGwire. Sorry, but it doesn’t belong to him any more than it belongs to the guy who pitched it. It’s not a souvenir, it’s a national treasure, bigger than all of them.

I would not keep it in my house. We already have too many darn balls rolling out of closets as it is.

The day after the catch, I would arrange a conference call between major league baseball and the people at the Hall of Fame.

I would tell them, I will donate the ball to Cooperstown under one condition: The ball must first go on tour.

Baseball must pay for the ball to spend the winter barnstorming the country, from New York city streets to Kansas farms to California beaches.

Baseball must let teenagers play catch with it, old men take pictures of it, sick children cradle it. It would appear on national talk shows, at state fairs and bingo. Like the Stanley Cup, only smaller.

The tour would remind us why baseball was once our national game, how it once crossed lines and touched millions, the importance of it becoming that way again.

It won’t be that hard to get sponsors to pay for it, and caretakers to conduct it, maybe old home run hitters in each town, maybe McGwire on days he’s not making a gazillion dollars in personal appearances.

Then on opening day, 1999, the ball goes permanently to Cooperstown.

That’s my deal.

If baseball and the Hall of Fame refuse?

Then I’m giving it to Pete Rose. Let them deal with him.