Boston Red Sox
Sox sue to keep World Series ball
09:20 AM EST on Thursday, December 1, 2005
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.
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