The shy, retiring Gilbert Arenas, not satisfied with hoarding vintage jerseys, tells DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg that he’d like to purchase Barry Bonds’ 756th career HR ball from designer Mark Ecko. The same ball Ecko is said to be donating to the Hall Of Fame affixed with an asterisk.
“It’s history,” Gil began. “It’s still history. I mean, the guy’s a man before he’s some big slugger. I mean, how you just going to take what this man’s done for his career and, as another man, say ‘Hey, you were accused of this, you allegedly did this, I want to take this away from you.’ I mean, what if we took away your Ecko company?
“I mean, why graffiti the ball when, in everybody’s mind, they think he’s done it. So no matter what, when they look at the ball, they’re gonna be like, ‘Oh, he allegedly….You don’t have to mark it in history. Like, who are you? Are you Superman? You’re sitting here throwing all the rockets into space: ‘I want to send it to space?’ Are you serious? Like, come on.”
Someone asked whether Gilbert thought Ecko was just a hater.
“I don’t know what his relationship is to Bonds, but I just didn’t understand it,” Gilbert said. “Like, as an athlete, I don’t want nobody to say, ‘He was in the hyperbaric chamber, we’re gonna ban that tomorrow, now the 60 points he scored last year, I’m going to dot those shoes up.’ Let’s be for real.”