Absolutely poetic!

If you've read through my posts last summer, you'll see that I'm not a very big fan of Barry Bonds.

That's couching it very very very nicely.

From his doping, the man has tainted not one, but in my opinion THE TWO most sacred records in baseball; the single season home run record, and the career home run record---the latter of which he broke this last regular Major League baseball season, which ends today with a 1-game playoff between Colorado and San Diego to determine the National League wildcard team.

Well, it just so happens that something interesting is happening with the ball that Bonds broke the record with---check this out!

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.

While representatives of the Hall were thrilled to get the ball from the most hallowed record in sports, they said their acceptance of the asterisk-laden piece of history did not mean that they supported the inference that Bonds used performance-enhancing substances to achieve his home run total.

"As far as we're concerned, the asterisk represents the voices of the fans for this one moment in time," said Jeff Idelson, the Hall's vice president for communications and education. "For this one week, in September of 2007, this is what the fans wanted. We felt it was worth it to take it."

By accepting Ecko's soon-to-be branded donation, the Hall, which operates independent of Major League Baseball, has put itself in the unusual position of taking, and then displaying, a ball that has been defaced. Idelson said that the Hall "does not support the defacing of artifacts," but that this ball was too monumental to ignore.

Absolutely poetic---I couldn't have imagined a more perfect ending to an otherwise despicable situation. ...and it was brought to you in Giant orange even... ...with a little Mariner blue too... S