This is completely absurd, isn’t it? Doug Mientkiewicz, who happened to be playing first base when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, and who now plays for Kansas City after a terrible year with the Mets, is still insisting that he owns the ball that he caught for the final out. Now Mientkiewicz and the Red Sox have agreed to settle the dispute through arbitration.
Actually, the legal question of who owns the ball is surprisingly complicated. It led to this entertaining discussion at Volokh, a highly-regarded blawg, and to this NYT op-ed piece (reg. req’d, sorry).
But the “right thing” question strikes me as quite easy. It should belong to the Red Sox. Or maybe to Major League Baseball. But surely not to Mientkiewicz – after all, it’s sheer happenstance that the last play was a grounder resulting in a put-out at first base. It just can’t be right that the guy who happens to have the ball in his glove for the last play gets to keep it. I mean, what if the Red Sox has been at bat when they won, say by hitting a sac fly that scored the winning run? Are you really going to say that the outfielder who caught the ball owns it, even though he was playing for the losing team?
Ridiculous. Mientkiewicz should just give the thing back and stop being a jerk.
If the last play of the game was a game winning home run, would the fan be required to return the ball?
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There’s nothing saying that the ball isn’t the property of whoever is holding onto it.
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I think it goes by the age old admonishment: ‘finders keepers, losers weepers.’