Beckett: Mientkiewicz has right to keep ball
By Joe Capozzi
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Josh Beckett doesn't know Doug Mientkiewicz, but both men have much more in common than being paid well to play baseball.
Mientkiewicz made $2.8 million last year a first baseman who started the season with the Minnesota Twins and ended it in improbable fashion — making the final out that clinched the Boston Red Sox's first World Series championship in 86 years.
The ball arguably is one of the most prized mementoes in Red Sox history. No wonder they want it so badly for their historical archives.
But Mientkiewicz, who played three seasons at Florida State, apparently has no plans other than keeping it for himself.
"That's my retirement fund," he told The Boston Globe. "I know this ball has a lot of sentimental value. I hope I don't have to use it for money.... But I can be bought. I'm thinking there's four years at Florida State for one of my kids."
Mientkiewicz, who has just three months of service with the Sox after coming over in a trade, has been catching a lot of criticism in Boston. But he has an ally deep down in Texas in the man who made the final putout of the 2003 World Series.
"I think he should be able to keep it," Beckett said. "It's not like (the Red Sox) own the ball. I'd tell him to keep it."
Beckett fielded a weak grounder near the first-base line and tagged Jorge Posada to give the Marlins their second championship in seven years — not nearly as dramatic as ending an 86-year drought.
But the baseball is special to Beckett. He somehow was able to preserve the moment and bring his glove, with the ball still tucked in the pocket, to his home in Spring, Texas. He put it in a wooden case and shoved it under his bed, where it has remained for more than a year, coming out sparingly as a conversation piece for visitors.
The Baseball Hall of Fame called not long after the World Series parade and asked for ball, along with Beckett's glove, hat, shoes and jersey. Beckett told the curator, "I'll give you my jersey and that's all you'll get."
Last January, Beckett invited me and another reporter to his home near Houston, led us into his room and pulled out the black glove with the baseball tucked inside.
"That ball has never been taken out (of the glove)," he said that day. "I think I'll just leave it in there. It's kind of neat. Maybe someday some guy will give me a hundred million bucks for it."
On Saturday, Beckett was on his way home from a deer hunting trip when he returned my call to weigh in on the Mientkiewicz flap.
"I got to keep mine. I don't see why he shouldn't. It's kind of trivial, really," he said as he loaded deer onto the bed of his pickup. "I still have it. I got it in another case, a nicer one. It still hasn't been taken out of that glove."
Beckett will make $2.5 million in 2005. More millions await him if he stays healthy. Hopefully he won't need to cash in his baseball. Hopefully it will stay in his family, assuming he doesn't pull a shocker and donates it to the Marlins.
The Marlins haven't requested it and apparently don't plan to. The Red Sox are trying to work out a deal in which Mientkiewicz would keep his ball but loan it to the team for display.
The Baseball Hall of Fame doesn't plan to get involved in the Mientkiewicz flap because the Hall usually doesn't ask for the baseball from the final out of a World Series. The Hall has the ball from the final outs of two championships — 1889 and 1903.
"Unless there's some real significance — and you can make a case for that in 2004 — we're just as happy to let the player who makes the final putout keep the ball," Hall spokesman Jeff Idelson said.
Idelson said he is glad Beckett still has the baseball from 2003.
"It certainly is meaningful for anyone who was so dominating in the World Series," he said. "This is a guy who beat the vaunted Yankees by pitching a complete game in Yankee Stadium to clinch a World Series. It probably doesn't get much better than that."
― rasheed wallace (rasheed wallace), Tuesday, 11 January 2005 13:36 (twenty years ago)