Contested Balls Under Lock And Key
The two most important home run balls Barry Bonds has hit - No. 73 of last year and No. 600 of his career - continued their trip through the court system Thursday in separate lawsuits.
In Fairfield, 40 miles northeast of where Bonds plays for the San Francisco Giants, a judge agreed Thursday to put the 600th home run ball under lock and key. It now sits in a safe in the Solano County sheriff's department, alongside evidence in the unsolved case of the 1960s serial Zodiac Killer.
Three men are suing their former friend and co-worker on grounds that he accepted tickets to the Aug. 9 game on the condition that - remote as it may have sounded - if he got the ball, he'd share its value.
The lawsuit over No. 600 shares the same sketchy details as the fight over No. 73, the single-season record ball that Bonds hit last October.
In both cases, the men who went home with the balls after a fight in the bleachers of Pacific Bell Park are sure the balls are theirs. Both cases have also provoked a what-have-we-come-to reaction from baseball fans.
Like No. 600, No. 73 is also in a safe. Patrick Hayashi had to give it up after he was sued by fellow fan Alex Popov, who insists he caught the ball before he was mobbed and it squirted out of his glove.
Popov has assembled a team of legal experts, more than a dozen witnesses and copies of a TV news video that shows him snagging the ball, at least momentarily, before being overwhelmed. Hayashi retorts that no one possessed the ball - and thus no one owned it - until he produced it for authorities after several minutes of chaos.
"What they want a judge to say is that if you go to a baseball game, it's the law of the jungle," said Martin Triano, Popov's lawyer. "Whoever ends up with the ball at the end of this testosterone event, you're the winner."
Hayashi's lawyers weren't available for comment.
On Thursday, a San Francisco judge decided to postpone until Friday his decision whether to dismiss the case. Both parties will be in court to restate their case, but chances are that the case will go to trial next month.
The crux of No. 73 is whether - and if so, when - Popov owned the ball. For No. 600, it's a question of whether Jay Arsenault promised to split the value of the ball in exchange for the tickets - and if so, whether that was a binding contract.
Under California law, oral promises are contracts under most circumstances - with some exceptions for real estate and the sale of expensive goods.
But is there a chitchat exception - an allowance that friends shooting the breeze might not always be serious?
Maybe.
"When you've got friends or relatives engaged in social undertakings more than business undertakings, the law doesn't deal with it as well," said Ron Micon, a contracts law professor at the University of San Francisco.
The men suing Arsenault say they have a witness that he promised to split the value should he get the ball. Arsenault denies ever making that promise and believes the ball is his, according to his lawyer, Steven D. Woodson.
On Thursday, a judge set a Dec. 17 court date to schedule a trial - but it might not come to that.
"I'd like to settle it," said Curtis Floyd, the lawyer hired by the three plaintiffs. "It's just, what are the terms of the settlement?"
Asked about settling out of court, Arsenault's attorney suggested room for hope.
"I can't say we are," Woodson said, "but you never know."