The Asterisk

In non-Yankee baseball news, fashion designer Mark Ecko will be donating Barry Bonds' record breaking 756th home run ball to the Baseball Hall of Fame after branding an asterisk into it. Ecko, who is a big fan of graffiti art, bought the ball for $752,467 (which makes me wish he would've ponied up the extra $3,533 to make it $756,000 even) and held an online poll allowing fans to decide what to do with it. 47% of fans voted to brand it with the asterisk and donate it to the Hall of Fame, 34% voted to donate it unblemished, and 19% voted to shoot it into space.

As a baseball history geek, I kind of like the result, not because I think Bonds' achievement should be denigrated, but because its a symbol of the era that achievement occurred in. I think fifty years from now fans will come to the Hall of Fame to see the ball and be reminded of how badly baseball owners and players dealt with the steroids issue, and how that affected the fans' view of the game.