09:20 AM EST on Thursday, December 1, 2005

Journal wire reports

To Red Sox fans, it is priceless -- the baseball that Keith Foulke flipped to Doug Mientkiewicz on an October night in St. Louis last year to clinch the team's first World Series championship in 86 years.

Now, 13 months after Mientkiewicz pocketed the ball, the team is playing hardball. Lawyers for the Red Sox filed suit yesterday in Boston's Suffolk Superior Court seeking permanent possession of the ball.

When the team first tried to claim it, the light-hitting but slick-fielding first baseman created a furor in Red Sox Nation by refusing to give it up.

In January, days after he was traded to the New York Mets, he and the team announced that the Red Sox would hold the ball temporarily and could display it across New England, along with the World Series trophy. But the agreement said he would get it back at the end of this year "unless the ultimate issue of ownership has been otherwise resolved."

That clause led Red Sox lawyer John G. Fabiano to the Suffolk civil clerk's office yesterday. The suit asks the court to place the ball in a "secure location" until ownership is decided.

The club's legal team said that Mientkiewicz had gained possession of the ball only because he was a Red Sox employee and that the ball remained the team's property. He played for the Mets last season, then was released, and is now a free agent.

Neither Mientkiewicz nor officials at the Major League Baseball Players Association could be reached for comment last night. He has said he never expected the controversy surrounding the ball.