Barry Bonds hit it. Alex Popov caught it (sort of). Patrick Hayashi took it home. And 14 months later, Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy split it in two.
That’s the basic story line in Up for Grabs, a new documentary produced and directed by Mike Wranovics, MBA ’94, about the bizarre, comical saga of two grown men fighting over a baseball.
It was no ordinary baseball, to be sure. When Bonds deposited his 73rd and final home run of a record-breaking 2001 season into the arcade at PacBell Park, it touched off a mad scramble for the presumably million-dollar piece of history. Up for Grabs cheekily capitalizes on Zapruder-like footage of the home run moment. Popov got his glove on the ball first, but Hayashi emerged from the scrum holding it. Did he steal it or was he merely a Johnny-on-the-spot during the melee? The film follows the ensuing two years of claims and counterclaims, culminating in McCarthy’s decision that Popov and Hayashi were equally entitled to the ball.
Wranovics, who abandoned a high-tech marketing career to pursue filmmaking, knew soon after the dispute began that it was begging for a film treatment. “It had human drama, suspense, unpredictability, and I’ve been a Giants fan since I was a kid. I just felt this was my story to tell.” He went “hat in hand” to friends and investors to finance the film.
An audience award winner at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Up for Grabs premiered in San Francisco on April 15.
On deck for Wranovics is a documentary about the February 2004 Stanford-Arizona basketball game won by then-junior Nick Robinson’s 35-foot buzzer beater. He’s calling it Miracle at Maples.
