Posted on Thu, Jun. 17, 2004

Frenzy over foul ball hit close to home

By Bud Kennedy (Fort Worth) Star-Telegram Staff Writer

I know how Nick O'Brien feels. Some guy ripped me off at a game 33 years ago. I've never forgotten. I'll admit that this was no plain old foul ball -- not like the one 4-year-old Nick lost Sunday in Arlington, when a former youth minister plowed over him for the grab. Matt Starr of Sachse has apologized for the now-infamous Showdown in Section 22.

No, when I got robbed, I got robbed big-time. I lost a basketball. A grown man grabbed it from under my feet after I caught it in a halftime giveaway at a pro game. I use the word pro loosely, but back then the Texas Chaparrals were the only pros we had, even if they played with a red-white-and-blue basketball that looked more like a beach ball to the curious few watching in what is now the Fort Worth Convention Center. Today, the Chaparrals are the San Antonio Spurs, and that basketball would be worth about $3,000.

The last time I saw it, some man in a camel-brown topcoat was running away with it down the arena concourse, charging the lane harder than the Chaparrals' Rich Jones or Ron Boone had all night. For a few fleeting moments, I was the proud owner of one of three ABA basketballs thrown to the crowd by the Chaparrals, struggling in a failed attempt to draw Fort Worth fans to a few token home games for Dallas' first pro basketball team. Unlike Nick O'Brien, I actually caught the ball. But I stashed it under my seat. It was my first pro basketball game. I didn't know that you're supposed to cover a loose ball. When the second half started, I heard a rustling noise behind me. When I looked over my shoulder, all I saw was the man and the back of that brown topcoat -- and a red flash of the basketball.

Now that I look back, the odds of catching a basketball that night weren't all that bad. The Chaparrals only drew about 2,000 fans to games in Fort Worth, as few as 200 some nights. I don't remember anybody sitting around me being upset that I lost my basketball. Then again, I don't remember anybody sitting around me. Come to think of it, that man in the brown topcoat might have been some Chaparrals employee making a steal for future reuse.

I went home and back to playing with my favorite toy of all: a manual typewriter. Not that I would have been any good at basketball. Even back then, I could never leap any higher than the top pantry shelf.

As a victim of unrestrained fan greed, Nick O'Brien has come out much better. The Plano boy is getting autographed bats, baseballs and gifts from all over the country. He was in New York on Wednesday morning, grinning shyly on ABC's Good Morning America as Charlie Gibson gave his family a New York Mets bag and tickets to a Mets game. Gibson said the boy was "practically steamrolled by a bully." Then Gibson showed the now-famous TV clip of Starr smirking as Rangers broadcaster Tom Grieve said, "Yeah, you got the ball, buddy. Nice going. You took it away from a little kid. ... You know, there's a jerk in every park, and there is the biggest jerk in this park."

The aggressive fan was identified as a 28-year-old Sachse landscaper and former youth minister at the Sachse Assembly of God Church. Friends are praying that reporters will learn more about his church mission work, the newspaper said. Until he offered an apology Wednesday, the fan himself had not been found. His only explanation had been the one he gave Rangers broadcasters Sunday: "I just caught the foul ball."

When Starr fell into their laps, shoving Nick O'Brien aside to catch the foul ball, Nick's mother Edie O'Brien began swatting the intruder with a lineup card that she had been using as a hand fan. On GMA, she remembered the man's first words to her: "Don't hit me again." When she told him he had just pushed a 4-year-old boy, he only shrugged and said sarcastically, "Oh, well."

The Dallas Morning News credited a Fort Worth man, Mike Hall, with starting the chant of "Give him the ball!" Even a woman with Starr seemed to be pleading for him to give Nick the ball, Edie O'Brien said on ABC. "He didn't care," she said.

The famous foul ball inspired days of headlines. The Tucson Citizen played up the religious aspect: "4-year-old gets windfall after ex-youth minister knocks him aside." Other newspapers have called it the "Foul Ball Foul-Up" and christened Nick the "Foul Ball Boy."

Starr's defenders also came forth Wednesday -- if not in public, at least on the KXAS/Channel 5 message board at www.nbc5i.com. Anonymous writers were saying that he only caught a foul ball and fell accidentally, and that he should not be expected to give Nick the ball.

I just want to know whether he owns a brown topcoat.