Posted at 6:13 a.m., Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Baseball: Californian buys Bonds' record-tying HR ball
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — The California entrepreneur who submitted the winning bid on Barry Bonds' record-tying 755th home run ball said yesterday that he also will let the public decide what to do with it.Ben Padnos told The Associated Press that he would follow the lead of fashion designer Marc Ecko, who bought Bonds' No. 756 ball, and let fans vote on whether he should give it to the Hall of Fame or destroy it.
Ecko said Monday he was taking votes on whether to give the ball to the Hall of Fame, brand it with an asterisk or blast it into space.
Padnos said he was surprised when he heard Monday that he wasn't the only one with a voting plan.
"What are the odds?" Padnos said. "I give him (Ecko) a lot of credit in all sincerity. I understood the potential value in this."
But unlike Ecko, Padnos plans to make money by selling ads on his voting Web site, EndtheDebate.com.
"My vote is to save it," he said. "I do believe records should be celebrated. I have my own suspicions about how Barry got there."
The 33-year-old Padnos, from Manhattan Beach, said he and about a dozen friends pooled their money to make the $186,750 bid. SCP Auctions confirmed that Padnos was the winning bidder.
Experts had predicted the ball that tied Hank Aaron's home run record would fetch about $200,000. Adam Hughes, a 34-year-old plumber from La Jolla, came up with No. 755 in the left-center field seats in San Diego on Aug. 4.
