AS I SEE IT COLUMN: Sports are the toy department in the hardware store of life

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It’s hard to imagine a time in history when that phrase is more accurate.

With “once in a 100 years” hurricanes happening twice in a couple of weeks, with the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine killing more people every day and peace nowhere in sight, and when in the Excited States of America a convicted criminal and panoramically stupid conman – someone who many Christians are mysteriously comfortable flushing their religious beliefs and moral integrity down the toilet for a grotesquely loathsome person who violates the Seven Deadly Sins on an hourly basis — could be the next American president, it feels like having some fun in the toy department of life is much needed respite from everything currently happening in the hardware department.

By now you probably know that Shohei Ohtani of baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers became the first person in the history of baseball to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season.

The mayhem that ensued when his historic 50/50 ball was rattling around the stands as fans frantically tried to grab not just a piece of history but a lottery ticket to a new life, was understandably fierce.

One man ultimately claimed the ball was his and an auction house is selling it to the highest bidder. (At press time, the price was over $2 million.) Soon there were not one but two lawsuits from other people who claimed they had the ball first.

All three litigants agreed the auction for the ball should continue, but a judge stepped in and said no one will be given the money until the courts weigh in as to who is the rightful owner of the ball.

Frame by frame video footage appears to show a younger kid first getting his hand the ball, only to have a bigger, stronger older guy pry it out of the kid’s hand. When the older guy triumphantly lifts the ball in the air as if it is his, you can see the younger guy shrug his shoulders with a look of “What’s going on here? That guy just took that ball away from me.”

When Barry Bonds – he of the large head amidst accusations of steroid use in his tainted pursuit of Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record – hit his historic 756th homerun, the guy who caught the ball split the $752,000 the ball fetched at auction with the friend he was at the game with. They had made a deal heading to the potentially history-making game that in the unlikely event either of them caught the ball, they would split the proceeds.

Interestingly, the guy who bought the ball let the internet decide what he should do with it. Fans could vote on whether to give the ball to the Baseball Hall of Fame, carve an asterisk into the ball or send it to outer space. Based on the survey, he carved an asterisk into the ball and then gave it to the hall of fame.

Here’s hoping the judge in the Ohtani case doesn’t split the proceeds evenly. The younger kid, the one who got his hand on the 50/50 ball first, should get most of the money. The older, stronger guy who ripped it out of the kid’s hand should not be rewarded with half of the money. He should receive substantially less – or in a just world, nothing at all – for the simple reason he took the ball away from someone who had it first.

Vic Peters’ charity on CTV News

Fans of the late great Vic Peters should tune into CTV’s supper hour newscast this Thursday at 5:10. Vic’s daughter Kasandra will be a guest. She’ll talk about “Vic’s Little VIPs,” the charity Vic’s family set up in his honour to help underprivileged kids.

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