Word: mcgwire
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Charlie, the smooth-haired twin, quotes a young cousin who, informed that the best Cardinal becomes Pope, asked, "So Mark McGwire will be next?" Tom, the twin with the hat, reports some of his classmates talking about scalping papal tickets. "The first thing that came into my mind," he says, "is that they're going to hell." That merits a couple of giggles...
...image out of my mind: "Mr. McGwire, I think I have something that belongs to you," 22-year-old Tim Forneris, a part-time grounds keeper for the St. Louis Cardinals, proudly decreed last fall as he handed over home-run ball No. 62--and with it probably the most expensive thing he would ever hold. Consider: a few weeks ago, a mysterious bidder paid $3 million to the guy who auctioned off home-run ball No. 70. I don't mean to pick on Forneris. Giving up the baseball was an honorable gesture. And he did get some fame...
...starters, Forneris was plain wrong about the ball's belonging to McGwire. Once the grounds keeper got his mitts on it, the ball was his. Says so right on every ticket to the game. He probably knew that and was thinking in grand, symbolic terms. Still, his act betrays a mind-set that leads many of us into grave errors in daily money matters. Here are Forneris' missteps and what you can learn from them...
...model in the catalog. Impulse buys are almost always a bad deal. Sleep on those decisions, and you'll probably not spend the money. Credit cards compound the problem by making impulse buys less painful. Forneris' sin was giving away his valuable baseball the day he caught it. McGwire would have been just as pleased to get it the next day, or even the next week. You lose nothing by taking time to think. "The smartest thing the guy who caught No. 70 did was go home with the ball that night," says Michael Barnes, a St. Louis, Mo., agent...
...that the Internet bubble has burst. But if you paid $199 a share for Amazon.com on Jan. 8, you know what I mean. If you didn't, here's a hint: last week the stock ended at $117. Forneris surely was influenced by herd thinking. In the weeks before McGwire's famous swat there was a groundswell of local opinion that home-run balls should be returned. "Fans who kept the balls were vilified," says Dan Paisner, who is writing a book on the subject. But it's nothing that...