I like the Baseball Hall of Fame. It’s where it should be, in a small town that has a claim (however tenuous now) to being a place where baseball started. Though no one really believes Abner Doubleday invented the game in the 1840s in Cooperstown, NY, the fact that the myth survived is in itself part of the structure of the idea of baseball – it is a game that inordinately attracts belief.
That is why I love the asterisk ball, the ball that Barry Bonds hit out of the park to beat the home run record of Hank Aaron. It is going to Cooperstown and it is going to have a asterisk, that symbol of a questionable stat, stamped on it.
The baseball from Barry Bonds’s much-debated 756th home run will soon land in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. When it gets there, it will be branded with an asterisk. Marc Ecko, the fashion designer who bought the ball for $752,467, asked the fans to decide how he should treat the memento. After more than 10 million online votes, 47 percent of voters wanted the ball to be adorned with an asterisk, 34 percent said it should not be changed and 19 percent wanted it to be shot into space. The first two options included the addendum that the ball would be donated to the Hall of Fame.
Why do I like this? It expresses the moment of the home run, the lunacy of the price of memorabilia, the scandal surrounding steroids as well as the humble fragile nature of the ball itself. It also captures the internet era and the dislocation of authority – neither Bonds or the Hall of Fame are controlling the moment.