Key figures talk about the Mark McGwire home-run record chase in 1998:


THAT WAS THEN

The morning before history landed in his lap and he shrugged off a fortune to hand it back, Tim Forneris sent out an e-mail to about 20 friends. In a tone more droll than boastful, the college kid who raked the Busch Stadium infield wrote: “I’m going to catch it.”

Little did he know how right he was.

Less than 24 hours after he grabbed the ball, Forneris, then just 22, was feted as a special guest of Disney World, chatted up by President Bill Clinton and whisked to Manhattan to appear on David Letterman’s show. On each occasion, he was heralded as not only the grounds crew member who caught the ball, but the young man who gave it back.

“Mr. McGwire, I think I have something that belongs to you,” he said that September night with the nation watching.
It has become the only unquestioned act of that evening.

The local man who caught McGwire’s No. 70 home run ball sold it for $3 million. Estimates at the time had No. 62, the one Forneris caught, worth at least $1 million.

“I have only seen it as a win-win situation,” Forneris said recently before tending to the field at Busch Stadium — a job he still holds. “You get to see all these random historic events in my job, and that was the hope that morning. You want him to hit it at home. You don’t want to miss it.”


THIS IS NOW

Forneris is 32, and though he still works at Busch, by day he’s an assistant public defender. There are times, even now, that Forneris will be approached about the ball he gave back and people will question him about the guy who hit it.

He gets the sense some fans want him to defend or indict the former Cardinal. He tells them: “I just rake the field, man.”

Often on his job, Forneris will visit his clients in prison. He knows each meeting has a limited time, and he throws a lot into it. So, at the end, he’s always sure to ask if there are any questions for him.

“Yeah,” one client said not too long ago. “But it’s not about my case. I just want to know, ‘Why’d you do it?’ ”

It’s a question he is happy to answer.

“Great experience,” Forneris said. “People will always ask if I regret it, would I do things differently? It never dawns on me that you could do anything different. When you are given a golden opportunity like I was, you are able to do a lot of things and you want to feel good about being a part of something like that. I definitely do.”