There was no need for the “baseball’s ultimate losers” line. He’s just another jerk writer from ESPN that I don’t plan to read.

It should be the call of the person who catches it, but if their willing to give up a souvenir then that’s their decision.

……….on how to spell “dilemma”.

What about Aaron Miles?

If I catch Albert Pujols historic 3rd HR, I’m keeping the ball. I’m not a big baseball souvenir guy, in fact on the night of Mark Prior’s first start at Wrigley (against the Pirates) I was sitting in the front row of the LF bleachers. During BP Kerry Wood was in the OF and I caught a ball he tossed into the bleachers (bare handed). Later in the game I spotted a kid with his dad, the kid had his glove on, and I told them Wood had tossed the ball and gave it to the kid. Seemed to have made his night. That said, if I catch any World Series homerun ball, I’m keeping it.

I don’t have any big beef with throwing a HR back except for two things:

1. It’s not good to encourage, allow or tacitly support throwing anything onto the field of play. IIRC when the Cubs had that incident where someone threw a ball that nearly hit the strapping Jacque Jones the fan weaseled out of it by claiming to have thought there was a HR.

2. That brings me to the second point. If you’re throwing a ball back other than the actual HR ball, then the tradition is meaningless to me and borderline ridiculous.

The “throw it back” thing happens all over now, and it even happens regularly at The Cell. Although when it does there is usually someone yelling not to do it and I’ve seen people get tossed for “throwing it back” and when they do “throw it back” it’s usually the actual HR ball. I don’t get too worked up over it either way.

“Throw it back?” Meh, I guess. What I would throw back, I mean throw away, is the (so-called) celebrity 7th inning stretch/“Take Me Out To The Ballgame.” That is ridiculous, embarrassing even.

I like the idea of playing a tape of Harry singing it. While I wasn’t a fan of Santo as a broadcaster, I enjoyed when he did “Take Me Out…” That was in the spirit of Harry. How about an actual random real fan picked from the crowd?

I have gotten a few BP homers, Lance Johnson once tossed one that I caught, 2 balls in the fall league. My only real game ball was at Wrigley up in about the 420’s. I stayed until the end of a big blowout and caught the ball with two outs and two strikes on the Cubs last hitter.

Got the ball signed by Wood that night. I love the ball because of the perfect pine tar thumb print on it.