Have a ball, and choose what happens
Tuesday September 18, 2007
Wouldn't it be nice to have $752,467 lying around, and then to have some fun with it by making a political statement?
That's what Marc Ecko, a hip-hop fashion mogul, did when he won the Sotheby's/SCP auction for Barry Bonds' 756th home run ball that he hit in August in San Francisco. And, in a delicious piece of irony, he's not exactly a Bonds fan.
What's he doing with it? He's not keeping it, and he's actually letting fans decide. Should he:
- Bestow It: Give the ball to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown;
- Brand It: Brand an asterisk on the ball, then give it to the Hall of Fame;
- Banish It: Launch it into space.
This is no joke. Click here and let your voice be heard!
So why is he doing it?
"If you follow the news, it's about a system that fosters, encourages and always rewards players, in the constituency in the system, by any means," Ecko told MTV.com. "And we kind of high-five each other because it's entertainment. We just play ostrich. "I've cheated in life, I've done stupid stuff. But the systems need to be put on check and put on blast. And this is a lighthearted way to ... bring that back up. ... I'm not a judge and jury — [the Bonds controversy is] not about me. I have an opinion, you have an opinion. It's fun. I'm having fun. Hopefully, overall, people will have an opinion."
Voting began Monday and will last for one week.
Barry Bonds haters (and lovers), you can send your message to Bonds with this one. Odds are that the slugger publicly won't care what anybody thinks, but at least he'll know.
Photo: Designer Marc Ecko attends the 75th anniversary of Save the Children on Sept. 6. Ecko purchased the ball Barry Bonds hit for his record-breaking 756th home run and is letting fans decide its fate on the Internet. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images)
Comments
You should be blasted into space! What kind of society do we live in when you spend almost 800,000 on a baseball when we still have a city to rebuild (New Orleans) and families that live in poverty. Do something positive with your money, and if your answer is you are then do more!
Here is a guy that must have more money than common sense. Mr. Ecko needs to stop flashing his money around town and the press. Is this the only way he can impress his friends or better yet make friends saying he paid 752,467 for a baseball that Barry Bonds hit. So what big deal who cares. What is the human race coming to when you put a sport before anything else that is important in life. That money would feed a lot of kids here in this country that are lucky to get maybe one meal a day or some clothes so they can go to school and not get teased because of the way they look. I have one word for Marc when you go to sleep at night in a nice warm bed and food in your stomach thank how you could have given some kid’s that same filling when they go to sleep at night.