Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run ball generated controversy for, like, four days over the summer when FASHION ICON
Marc Ecko decided to buy it. Ecko made a deal with fans: If you visited
marcecko.com, you could choose to vote for Marc to send the ball to space, brand it with an asterisk, or blowing it up, which is not a very fair set of choices to Bonds. Anyway, fans chose the asterisk, and unbelievably, the
Hall of Fame is going to accept it as such:
Jeff Idelson, vice president of communication and education for baseball's Hall of Fame and Museum, expressed confidence that the shrine eventually will receive the ball Barry Bonds hit for his record-setting 756th home run, perhaps by Opening Day.
"The asterisk doesn't implicate Barry," Idelson said. "It's purely a part of the story of how it ended up in Cooperstown. You let the visitor determine how they feel and make their own value judgment. We would never suggest how they value or judge things."
Idelson's view
would be plausible -- that it's up to the HoF consumer to decide -- except that people could probably decide for themselves better if there wasn't a big fat red asterisk staring back at them. Barry Bonds may have done lots and lots of cattle steroids (mmm ... cattle steroids), but don't people know that already? As much as the Hall might try to deny it, showing the ball with an asterisk forces a value judgment on Bonds, rather than simply allows it, and that's no way to have a productive conversation about steroids. Not to mention it validates Marc Ecko, which is just ... ew.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-06-2008 @ 5:12PM
Roger said...
Bonds cheated for years. He knows it and the rest of us outside of San Franciso know it as well. The asterisk on the ball is a proportional response to his cheating. The asterisk will be a permanant reminder of how the ends justified the means. If Bonds or others object to the "scarlet letter" they should look remember why fans voted it there in the first place. Fans feel cheated by Bonds so-called fake accomplishments. They shilled out hard earned money to watch this juiced star make a mockery of the record book.
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3-06-2008 @ 8:42PM
Peter said...
I'm pretty sure one of the options in the vote was to submit the ball to Cooperstown without the asterisk, but that option didn't win obviously.
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3-06-2008 @ 10:21PM
al said...
yea put it along side his steroid needle
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3-07-2008 @ 12:10AM
Jason S. said...
It's nothing more than a marketing ploy by Ecko that everybody, including the Hall of Fame, has fallen for. Check the link below.
http://dwil.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/barry-bonds-marc-wants-to-leave-his-ecko-in-baseballs-and-americas-hall-of-memories/
In the article, DWil writes:
"You see, the asterisk is an integral part of the Marc Ecko brand image. The asterisk, not so ironically, is the character attributed to noting a footnote and it is the character found just before the Ecko name on every piece of clothing, on every accessory ever made by the company Marc Ecko owns."
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