Wild in the streets
Three people claim to be rightful owner of Sosa's 62nd homer
Posted: Tuesday September 15, 1998 01:32 PM
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After Brendan Cunningham emerged with the ball Sosa clobbered for No. 62, he bolted away from the crowd and sought out police protection AP |
CHICAGO (AP) -- The home run battle between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire is
nothing compared to the fierce tussle behind Wrigley Field for Slamming
Sammy's prodigious clouts. When Sammy Sosa launched his 62nd
home run onto Waveland Avenue on Sunday, dozens of Cubs fans made a pile,
then bit and kicked and punched until one guy emerged with the
baseball. Three people now claim to be the rightful owner, but
police said Monday possession is 10-tenths of the law in this case and
whoever has the ball now can keep it. "Only in Chicago," sighed
Officer Cindy Lance, a police spokeswoman, who said the affair was no
longer considered a police matter. The homer left lumps on fans
and Sosa tied with McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals
for the major league home run lead. As Sosa has closed in on the
home run record of 61 set by Roger Maris in 1961, the crowd outside the
ball park has swelled to the hundreds. When Sosa hit No. 61 in
the fifth inning Sunday, John Witt of Dixon grabbed the ball and hid in a
van after outrunning the pack of ball-catchers outside the park.
Witt also won fame a few years ago for appearing in a Spike Lee commercial
for Nike. Dave Miedema, a writer for a sports collectors'
magazine, said he bought Witt's historic baseball for "a sizable four
figures." When Sosa hit that homer, Bob Milkovich was watching
on TV at home with his wife, who is 8 1/2 months pregnant. He had stayed
close to home in recent days but wanted to be there in case Sosa hit
another. "I says, 'Honey, you mind if I go for a bike
ride?'" She didn't, and off Milkovich went, armed with a pager,
cellular phone, tiny TV and camera with telephoto lens. Fans
were crowded around Milkovich's 2-by-2 television screen when Sosa hit the
ninth-inning blast to tie McGwire's record-breaking mark. "It
looked like we had the winner," Milkovich said. "So I'm running
to my left with the TV in my hand and everybody following me. ... The ball
just kind of streamed over and when it hits the alley there's just a sea of
people," he said. "There's a group of people just immersed over
somebody who got the ball. Usually, somebody gets a ball, the struggle
stops. But in this situation, I think there were dollar signs," he said.
"This was the biggest home run ball you'd ever catch." The
battle continued until one man, later identified as Brendan Cunningham, 33,
a mortgage broker from suburban Buffalo Grove, emerged with the ball hidden
under his shirt, escaped the crowd and took off. "As he's
running away from me, 500 people took off after him," Milkovich said. "It
was pretty scary." Cunningham found some police officers a
half-mile or more from the park, and they whisked him away for
protection. Delivery truck driver Gary "Moe" Mullins, who
claimed to have grabbed the ball first, later showed up at a police station
to complain that he had been robbed of the ball. Police at the station said
Mullins, 47, had been bitten and kicked and appeared to have a broken
hand. Mullins, who has caught thousands of balls in the more
than 30 years he's been a game-day fixture on the sidewalks outside Wrigley
Field, later said he was considering a civil lawsuit to recover the
ball. To further complicate matters, Jose Rivera, who turned 16
the day after the game, is also claiming to be the first person to catch
the ball. There may be no real way to prove who has No. 62.
After McGwire broke the record, Major League Baseball stopped putting a
secret code on balls pitched to him and Sosa. "Now you know how
Elvis and the Beatles felt. Or the running of the bulls in Pamplona,
Spain," Milkovich said. "I never did that, but I did it yesterday."
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