By Tim Robertson

FOR STARTERS…

If I put more than $750,000 mixed with a ball of yarn in a cowhide leather briefcase and wrapped it with red cotton stitches, would you want me to give it for the public to admire, brand an embarrassingly-large mark on it deeming it illegal or rocket it toward another planet?

Now my sanity is called into question and no one knows why I’d give you such ludicrous options.

It seems that one other person is just as crazy as I am, but he is serious. After purchasing Barry Bonds’ 756th home run for more than $750,000, fashion designer Marc Ecko is giving baseball fans similar choices. On his Web site www.vote756.com/marcecko, the public can vote on whether to give the sacred baseball to Cooperstown, brand an asterisk on it or blasting it into space.

Bonds supposedly already called the concept a waste of money, and for once, I’d have to agree with Mr. Steroid.

Simply put, this is a publicity stunt for a 35-year-old clothing designer. Scratch that. It’s one heck of an expensive stunt.

Despite what anyone thinks about the King of The Cream, the concept of “[democratizing] the debate over what to do with [the ball],” only brings up the saga that entrenched baseball for years up until this summer. Major League Baseball and sports in general don’t need to pull the mess that everyone swept under the rug this past summer.

Obviously millions of people will participate in the vote. Some bitter fans will opt for the asterisk choice, baseball traditionalist and Bonds-sympathizers-they do, surprisingly, exist-will demand it goes to the Hall of Fame, and either hard-line haters of Bonds or those people that choose the most ridiculous option to see it actually done, will vote for blasting it toward outer space.

If this Ecko follows through with the absurd stunt, there are enough people in the latter two groups so that in 200 years some alien from Uranus will discover it and question the sanity of people on Earth.

But, if I had my way, there would be two men there to explain to the alien how the ball got up there: the Pharaoh of Flaxseed Oil and Marc Ecko.

MEANWHILE…

Somewhere Dennis O’Leary is cursing out Bucky Dent as he rolls awake at night in his bed, thinking about 1978 and how scarily similar 2007 seems, hoping that the famous Flop Sox of the 90s don’t make a comeback tour in this final week of the season.

But the tide is against him. The Yankees trailed Boston by 13.5 games on June 2, and through Tuesday, the Bronx Bombers closed to within 2.5 games of their fiercest rivals.

This season brings back déjà vu memories of 1978, when Boston led New York by 14.5 games in mid-July, lost the lead, then the division when Bucky Dent towered a three-run homer in a one-game tiebreaker at the end of the season.

The Red Sox, who have been without Manny Ramirez for weeks, didn’t lose all of their enormous lead in the dog days of summer, but the Red Sox watched it slowly slip, until recently when it tumbled to its current level, a seven-game lead on Sept. 3.

Many viewed their seven-game lead comfortable, considering Boston had to play AL East walkovers like Baltimore and Tampa, but last weekend they dropped a three-game series at Fenway to the Yanks, then they lost two straight to the Blue Jays earlier this week.

Back in the olden days before Doug Mientkiewicz walked off the field at Busch Stadium with “the ball” in his glove, Red Sox fans blamed Babe for their classic and epic chokes.

Now where can they turn?

Only to their own team, and for one simple reason. Dating back to May, the Red Sox are an abysmal 3-9 against the Yankees. If the Red Sox had split, that would equal three more wins and a 5.5 game lead in the AL East, well on the way to the team’s first division title since 1995.

No more Babe, Bucky, Buckner or Boone to blame this classic flop on. This was a team effort.

Bonds’ ball may soon be branded with an asterisk, blasted into space or put on display in the Hall of Fame. (CNNSI.com)