It’s Gonna Feel So Good

Do you remember that appropriately named foul ball that got bobbled by the doofus Chicago fan in the playoffs against the Florida Marlins, dooming the Cubs’ effort to return to the World Series after 58 years?

Well, some well-heeled citizen named Grant DePorter has bought that foul foul ball for $106,600. Unbelievable! That just shows how skewed our society’s values and priorities are in an affluent age of dissension, deficits and war. That ball is worth at least a half-mil.

Especially when you consider what DePorter plans to do with it. He’s going to destroy the ball, annihilate it, crush it, burn it, chop it, grind it, melt it, extinguish every frayed fiber of its inert being to keep it from becoming a Florida souvenir. Great idea. Half the people in Florida can’t remember why they’re there anyway. What would they do with a scuffed baseball on their mildewed mantel by the velvet Elvis portraits?

Cub fans have better memories. They know how long it’s been and how close it was. They know the Cubbies were leading 3 to 0 with only five outs separating them finally from the World Series. Millions of folks around Wrigley Field and the world saw that foul ball arc toward the stands. Everybody saw Moises Alou locked onto the descending orb, leaping, glove extended, open. Everybody saw this but one besotted boob who stuck his hand in, prevented the out and didn’t get the ball anyway. The Marlins went on to score eight runs and win the series and the Series. In the interests of continuing to breathe and avoiding exile to Montreal or Cicero, Ill., that fan issued a blanket apology. That’s not worth $1.

The ball’s owner put it up for Internet auction. DePorter won the losing ball. He’s managing partner in Harry Caray’s Restaurant, founded by and named for the Cubs’ Hall of Fame broadcaster, sort of Chicago’s Chick Hearn with large glasses. Harry has been turning in his grave ever since October’s foul.

To put his soul and the minds of Cub fans forever to rest and thwart at least one aspiration of those swordfish lovers, on Feb. 26 DePorter intends to put this ball out of our misery in a manner to be determined from fan suggestions. A kind of cathartic destruction, so when Dusty Baker’s little kid returns someday to coach the ever-hopeful Cubs in their continuing World Series quest, he won’t have to contend with some Marlin fan waving a scuffed ball that already exited Wrigley Field once.