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December 1, 2005Jeff: The Red Sox ball lawsuit is awesome. "Hey, can we borrow that ball for a year?" "Sure, but give it back as soon as you're done." "No problem" .... "Where's my ball?" "Fuck you, thief!"
Rob: Office supplies and baseballs aren't the same thing. Jeff: It's just that staplers usually don't go flying out the windows
into crowds. But if they did, there'd be something written about
it. Rob: I'd say envelops or something like that is a better analogy.
Baseballs are disposable. Jeff: You're still not supposed to take them, but who cares about
a single envelope? Now if one happened to be worth a million dollars,
suddenly the company would care. Rob: There's precendent too. Ballplayers have been keeping these
things for a very long time. I guess it boils down to whether you
think that's never been right, or whether common practice over time
has created an acceptible practice. Jeff: It depends whether they're keeping balls with the blessing
of the team or not. Rob: This could open quite a revenue stream for owners. A lot them
could sue ex-players for damages. Rob: Anyway, this whole thing is stupid. Let Mientkiewicz keep
the fucking ball. Do we seriously have to turn everything into a
stupid, rigidly defined legal situation? Players have kept memorabilia
for about a century now, and things seemed to have worked out fine. Jeff: You're aguing a slippery slope in one direction, but there's
just as big a problem in the other. What's to stop every fringe
player from trying to grab valuable memorabilia on their way out
the door? A century's worth of players keeping stuff is irrelevant
when the value of the things skyrocketed in the last ten years. Rob: They do, and they have for years. It's more of a problem when
they start grabbing it from other players' lockers. Rob: And what's the value, really? The Red Sox aren't selling this
thing on eBay, so what's it worth? Jeff: I would have thought Jeter's glove was worth more than $2500. Jeff: Did you see the auctions for World Series stuff? The Red
Sox sold a bunch of stuff for the Jimmy Fund. The lineup card went
for some ridiculous amount. Terry Francona could have kept it for
himself. Rob: Do the players buy the uniforms they wear? Or does the team
supply them? Who bought all the jerseys Pete Rose used to change
into between innings so he could sell them? Rob: I'd be suprised if they end up selling this ball after all
this. Jeff: They won't, but I'm certain they'll use it in some sort of
display, either in the park or some kind of permanent exhibit with
other shit that they can charge admission for. Rob: If you're stupid enough to pay money to see a baseball, you
should be required to put Doug Mientkiewicz's kid's through college
yourself. Jeff: Obviously it wouldn't be by itself, but they could easily
put together a mini Hall of Fame style thing with all the other
shit they have stuck in storage and run that year round. They didn't
buy every building in the area for nothing. Rob: As far as I can tell, it's about two things: whether a ball
is fair game to anyone, players included, when it leaves the field
of play or not, and whether precedent has created a sort of common
law about this or not. I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea what
the real merits of either case are. Not that it would help to ask
a lawyer, because you could easily find as many to argue one side
as you could another. Rob: On a personal level, I think things have gone just fine for
years, and I like the idea of the players ending up with these things
rather than the clubs. But this is a part of the larger fight between
baseball owners and baseball players, who all hate each other. Jeff: I don't like Doug Mienkiewicz ending up with anything. He's
a douche and he can't hit. Rob: See, I don't like the idea of this working out for the Red Sox because Dan Shaughnessy started shit. It needlessly encourages him.
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