By Steve Rushin
Little, Brown and Company
340 pages
"In 1916, Cubs owner Charlie Weeghman wearied of fighting his own customers and became the first owner to let fans keep the baseballs. Not every owner followed suit. In 1921, the Giants, as was their custom at the Polo Grounds, ejected a thirty-one-year-old stockbroker named Reuben Berman for failing to turn over a foul ball. Berman sued the team and won $100 for his mental and physical distress.
"The following season, at the Baker Bowl in Phildadelphia, eleven-year-old Robert Cotter declined to return a foul ball at a Phillies game. The club had a reluctant policeman arrest the boy on a larceny charge, for which he was – it scarcely seems possible now – jailed overnight. The Phillies’ business manager, William Shettsline, had been looking to make a test case over a $1.50 baseball. That he chose an eleven-year-old boy as his scapegoat was a tactical error, to say the least."
[The judge in the case scolded the Phillies and ruled that the boy was “following his own natural impulses. … Shortly after Phillies v Cotter, fans were allowed to keep foul balls and home runs" except during WWII, when they were collected and sent to American servicemen overseas.]
