THE GOLD BALL GAME

A little bit of baseball history is there for the taking. All you need is Internet access and a lot of extra cash.

Listed on the online auction eBay, right between two color pictures of Mark McGwire going for $8.99 and a 1998 McGwire Rawlings glove selling for six bucks, is the ball McGwire hit for his 64th home run last season. Asking price: $90,000.

“I just figured I’d put it out there and stir up a little interest,” says Jason King, who caught the ball in Milwaukee County Stadium last summer and put it up for sale this week.

You see, it really isn’t about the baseballs. A baseball you can buy at any ballpark. You sure can’t tell what’s special about them simply by looking at them. A ball sails past one side of the foul pole, it’s just a strike. If it passes the other side of the foul pole and has a significant number attached to it, it’s worth millions.

Even for the men who caught those historic balls McGwire bashed out around the country last season, they were merely a passport, a ticket to a privileged world. Some sold the balls, some gave them back. It didn’t matter what became of the balls. They had already served their purpose.

“I feel like I was a part of history,” says Mike Davidson, a St. Louis resident who caught the home run that tied Roger Maris’ record of 61.

What made the Great Home Run Race between McGwire and Sammy Sosa so special was that fans didn’t just watch it. They touched it. When the baseballs completed their arcs into history, people were waiting to snatch them up and add their names to the story.

Home runs don’t land in luxury boxes, they land in bleachers, where the real fans sit. For games at Wrigley Field, the fans didn’t even need a ticket, only the patience and the toughness to stake out a spot on Waveland Avenue while waiting for Sosa to launch one out of the park.

That’s one other thing that went wrong for Dodger fans last year. Besides all the turmoil and a team that came up short of the playoffs, they missed the chance to share in the McGwire experience because he was injured and didn’t play when the Cardinals made their only visit to Dodger Stadium last June. Now a hamstring injury puts his availability in doubt for this weekend’s Cardinal-Dodger games, meaning Dodger fans could be robbed of another chance to catch the fever.

The ball itself isn’t what it’s about. It’s about the moment, the chance to be a participant and stay a part of that moment forever.

In talking with three lucky fans who grabbed McGwire home run balls last season, that’s what came out loud and clear.

The memories are free. The baseballs required insurance and safe deposit boxes.

“It’s like I never had it,” says Kerry Woodson Jr., the temporary owner of No. 69. “I had it, but I had to keep it locked up in a bank. It wasn’t like something you could hang up on a wall and display, because of the extreme value of it.”

Woodson sold his ball for an undisclosed six-figure sum to Todd McFarlane in December. McFarlane, the creator of the “Spawn” comic book and a self-described “psycho fan” and “sports geek,” also bought Nos. 63, 67 and 68 for $50,000 each, and paid $2.7 million for the record-setting No. 70 at an auction earlier this year.

That’s why King, who lives in Hollywood, thinks his ball might have accumulated a little value. It’s the only one between No. 60 and No. 70 that wasn’t bought by McFarlane or returned to McGwire and the Cardinals. It had better have some value. King’s car keeps breaking down and he needs a new set of wheels.

The ball has already served its purpose to him. He has held it, enjoyed it, shared it with his family. It’s also the centerpiece to an incredible story.

A year and a half ago, King discovered he had a 37-year-old brother who had been put up for adoption shortly after birth. The brother, David Wilshear, had hired a private detective to find his birth mother.

“I had five sisters,” King says. “To find out I had a brother was pretty neat.”

When they met, two of the things they quickly discovered they had in common were being left-handed and a love of baseball. One of the first things they did together was go to a San Diego Padre game.

King moved from San Juan Capistrano to Madison, Wis., last May to be with Wilshear. In June they bought tickets to a Milwaukee Brewer game against the Cardinals in September, and King spent the rest of the summer telling everyone that he was going to catch home run No. 62. He was off by a couple, but in the right direction.

After the security guards hustled him away from the crowds fighting to get the ball, he was asked if he wanted to give it to McGwire and meet him. King’s response was that he wanted to call his brother, who couldn’t make it to the game that day.

“Everything happened the exact way I planned it,” King says. “It brought me and my brother so close. We’re going to split the money 50-50, just like we talked about. The memories . . . I know even if I sell the ball, nobody can ever take that away.”

If you can’t see the potential screenplay in that little tale, you haven’t been living in L.A. long enough.

He heard various offers for the ball, but nothing concrete. Besides, he wanted to keep it awhile and show it to the rest of his family.

When King drove back home to California last December, he took out insurance for $50,000 and sent it by Federal Express to his parents.

“I did not want it with me,” King says. “You can’t insure it [that way]. If I got in a car accident and the ball’s in the gutter, I’m never going to see it again.”

With scenarios like that--worst-case, though they may be--it didn’t make sense to hold onto the balls. And no, it didn’t make people wrong to sell them, either.

They owed it to themselves and their families to make smart financial decisions if they had the opportunities. The Baseball Hall of Fame didn’t offer to pay any of the $100,000 in graduate school expenses racked up by veterinary student Heath Wiseman, who sold his home run ball No. 68. When I caught up with King on his cellular phone Thursday, he was spending part of his 24th birthday on the side of the Santa Ana Freeway because his car had broken down again.

For the guys like Davidson, who gave the balls back, let them bask in their goodwill.

“I’ve got some family members that think I’m crazy, but it doesn’t matter,” Davidson says.

He just smiles and goes to Cardinal games with the season tickets the team gave him as part of the exchange for the ball. He has his magic moment preserved on videotape, having had the presence of mind to set the VCR for every game after McGwire reached 59. He has clippings of his name appearing in newspapers from as far away as Germany, thanks to his brush with greatness.

Woodson still appears on St. Louis television, in a Cardinal commercial that has a clip of the home run he caught.

“Every time you see it, it’s as shocking as the day it happened,” he says. “I can’t believe it’s me.”

The baseballs did their job. They changed lives. Then it was time for them to move on.

And time to look for new baseballs.

“I’m going [to Dodger Stadium] on Sunday,” King says. “I’m going to catch No. 7.”

McGwire’s HR balls:

No. 60

Caught by: Deni Allen of St. Louis County

Ball then: Gave ball to McGwire.

Ball now: McGwire has it.

*

No. 61

Caught by: Mike Davidson, Affton, Mo.

Ball then: Gave ball to McGwire.

Ball now: McGwire has it.

****

No. 62

Caught by: Tim Forneris, Collinsville, Ill.

Ball then: Gave ball to McGwire.

Ball now: At Baseball Hall of Fame.

****

No. 63

Caught by: John Grass, Affton, Mo.

Ball then: Kept it.

Ball now: Bought at auction by Todd McFarlane ($50,000).

****

No. 64

Caught by: Jason King, San Juan Capistrano.

Ball then: Kept it.

Ball now: King trying to auction ball on Internet ($90,000).

****

No. 65

Caught by: Chuck Dombrowski Jr., University of Wisconsin.

Ball then: Gave ball to McGwire.

Ball now: McGwire’s son Matt has it.

****

No. 66

Caught by: Doug Chapman, Des Peres, Mo.

Ball then: Gave ball to McGwire.

Ball now: Cardinals have it.

****

No. 67

Caught by: Doug Singer, Grapevine, Texas.

Ball then: Kept it.

Ball now: Bought at auction by Todd McFarlane ($50,000).

****

No. 68

Caught by: Heath Wiseman, Bryant, S.D.

Ball then: Kept it.

Ball now: Bought at auction by Todd McFarlane ($50,000).

****

No. 69

Caught by: Kerry Woodson Jr., Maryland Heights, Mo.

Ball then: Kept it.

Ball now: Bought by Todd McFarlane (six figures, price unknown).

****

No. 70

Caught by: Philip Ozersky, Washington University, St. Louis.

Ball then: Kept it.

Ball now: Bought at auction by Todd McFarlane ($2.7 million).