Hostage

Please raise your hand if you have ever taken your baseball glove to a big-league ballpark. OK. Now raise your hand if you’ve ever caught a foul ball or a home run. Not many of you. But do you go to games believing it’ll happen this time? Tonight a Mark McGwire cloudscraper will fall into foul territory and you’ll catch it?

I have a theory. Maybe it’s only the wishful speculation of a baseball romantic. So laugh if you will. But I think this sweetest of baseball summers owes part of its success to a tradition so ingrained in the game’s culture that to change it would be to foment rebellion by the masses if not outright war. That tradition is, They Give Balls Away.

Tens of thousands of balls are given away to big-league baseball’s customers. And not only on home runs and fouls. Coaches throw balls into the stands on fouls, outfielders do it after a third-out catch (or, in some embarrassing cases, after two outs), umpires do it with scuffed balls between innings. Even sentries patrolling foul territory scoop ‘em up and deliver balls to youngsters clamoring at the box-seat railings.

It’s wonderful. The ball is the heart of the game; to give it to a fan is to share a heartbeat. I can tell you where I stood the first time I touched a big-league ball (behind my grandmother’s tavern in Lincoln, Ill.; the ball was dirty, scuffed and shimmering with dreams; it had been caught in St. Louis, fouled off by Browns’ catcher Sherm Lollar).

This connection of hearts across generations separates baseball from lesser games. Only baseball could have put such a smile on America’s face. And it’s simply astonishing to have done it less than four years after major league club owners slapped that same face.

Yet in this summer of magic, we have opened wide our arms and embraced the scoundrels-become-heroes. It wasn’t that long ago that Sammy Sosa’s whine was more famous in Chicago than his smile. Even George Steinbrenner finally is acting his age. For a neat little while that will long be remembered, the hero Mark McGwire bumped the scoundrel President Clinton to the bottom of our front pages. This is life as life should be.

Wait. A dissent? Football? Someone believes football is the greater game? Let me, in that case, ask this: Have you ever gone to a football game feeling you might get lucky and come home with a football?

No, no, no. Football’s moguls make sure you never get a football. People are hired to retrieve the things. There are giant nets raised behind the goal posts to snare every football kicked on extra-point and field-goal attempts. Much ado, methinks, about a few puffs of compressed air surrounded by pig remains.

Basketball? As for that game now embarked on a savagely masochistic mission certain to alienate it even further from fans, the NBA also behaves as if a basketball cannot be replaced. So when Dennis Rodman chases a ball toward your seat, referees hold up play until 1) Rodman is done kicking you, and 2) you’ve given back the wayward rock.

Hockey? The frozen moonpie comes over the glass, knocks out your two front teeth, you get to keep the bloodied rubber.

So I come to you today, Dear Reader, with a proposition. We should honor those baseball fans who chased down McGwire’s home runs 56 through 62. Rather than hold the balls for themselves or for a ransom from memorabilia dealers, these fans did the right, generous and honorable thing. They handed the balls to the man who hit them.

Wait. Another dissent, this from a wonderful newspaperman who, for a minute or two, must have fallen asleep while typing. No other explanation suffices for this astonishing arrangement of words:

“There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell I’d hand over anything for free when there was a million-dollar check out there waiting for me. Mac is a multi-multimillionaire. Major League Baseball and the Hall of Fame are multibillion dollar businesses. I’d give them all the right of first refusal before selling out to the highest bidder. Like baseball itself, that’s the American way.”

No, no, no. The American way? Please. Not in baseball during a summer of magic. The folks who returned McGwire’s home run balls asked only for small rewards: a McGwire jersey, a photograph with the hero, an autographed bat, a spot in batting practice with the Cardinals.

The young man who came up with the 61st home run ball is Mike Davidson, a meat caterer from St. Louis. He said getting a million dollars for the ball would be too much aggravation. He knew a man who’d hit the lottery and lost his friends. Bad deal.

The young man who retrieved the 62nd home run ball is Tim Forneris, a member of the Cardinals ground crew. He raised high the ball and said, “Mr. McGwire, I think I have something that belongs to you.”

Mr. Davidson and Mr. Forneris, in your words are signs of hope for civilization. To you I bow.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Offer

What Mark McGwire and the Cardinals will give for home run ball No. 63:

* 2 autographed bats

* 2 autographed balls

* 2 autographed jerseys

The Ransom

What John Grass wants in return for home run ball No. 63:

* up to 20 signed bats, balls and jerseys for family members and friends.

* all expense paid trip for four next spring to Jupiter, Fla., site of the Cardinals spring training facilities.

* 2 autographed jerseys by Hall of Fame Stan Musial.