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	TODAY: Monday, May 15
	One glorious ... and wet baseball By Jayson Stark ESPN.com
	In the great and glorious history of baseball, thousands of people have caught a home-run ball. But as far as we know, only one of them was floating around in an inflatable boat in San Francisco Bay at the time. He's a fellow named Joe Figone, a 38-year-old ex-groundskeeper at Candlestick Park. And last Monday night, he was drifting along in the waters beyond the right-field fence at Pac Bell Park, when one crack of the bat changed his whole existence. Triviality The struggles of Mike Hampton and Jose Lima made us recall that only three 20-game winners in the '90s fell to under 10 wins the next season. Can you name them. (Answer at bottom) For eight games before that, the "SplashHits" sign at Pac Bell -- which was supposed to count Giants home runs dunked into McCovey Cove -- had been stuck on zero. So for eight games, Figone drifted along in his little red raft, along with enough other vessels to win the naval war games. "Just drifting around, talking, mostly," he reported. Depending on the day, the Giants' fleet ranged from 50 to more than 100 boats, not even including surfers. It was one of baseball's all-time wildest scenes: Pizza. Beverages. Portable radios. If you build it by a body of water, they will float. And they did. "One night," Figone said, "a guy was having a bachelor party out there, on this big boat -- a 100-foot cruiser. There were probably 50 or 60 guys on the boat -- and two beautiful twin blondes, with not one bit of clothing on. That was about as crazy as it got." Well, as the saying goes, whatever floats your boat. But the main attraction -- except when unforeseen distractions arrived -- was a home-run ball to be named later. It was thought, when Pac Bell was constructed, that homers would go plunking into the bay -- barely 400 feet from home plate -- on a semi-regular basis. And sure enough, in an exhibition game with the Yankees just before the season opened, Barry Bonds gave new meaning to that term, "sailing fastball," by dunking a homer into the water. But eight regular-season games later, it was beginning to look as if there was a better chance of a ball being hit out of the Metrodome than into the Cove. Barry Bonds was the first player to hit a ball into McCovey Cove much to the delight of a former Giants groundskeeper. "When I went out there for the exhibition game, I never intended to try for a ball," Figone said, "because what were the odds of getting one?" But then he met the guy who caught Bonds' preseason homer, and they agreed to keep coming back every game. So they came. And they floated. And they waited. And they waited. And they waited. "Finally," Figone said, "I thought, 'Maybe I should get a new net.' So on Saturday, I went to Big 5 Sporting Goods and spent $25 for a net. Then, on Monday, I thought, 'This is ridiculous. Someone's got to hit a ball out of there.' I just knew something had to happen that night. So I brought a bottle of champagne." In the sixth inning, he was cruising around out beyond the other boats, about 150 feet from the dock, when he heard on the radio that Bonds was up. So he steered his boat a little closer. Mets left-hander Rich Rodriguez delivered. Bonds -- the 294th Giant to bat in Pac Bell since opening day -- swung. And Figone looked up to see his grand prize heading his way. "I could see the ball traveling over the field," he said. "And I was in just the right spot. I was able to line up with it, come in about 25 feet, and the ball was coming toward the right side of my boat. I steered in with my left hand. The ball hit the water. I killed the engine. I scooped it out of the water. And I started to drift away." And then, since this was baseball's first floating demolition derby, he got rammed from the side by a big 18-foot fiberglass power boat. "That litle inflatable boat changed my life -- and saved my life," Figone said. "If I'd had a rigid hull, I'd be dead." But those quotes tell you he survived just fine. The crowd roared. He uncorked his champagne and sprayed it into the night. And when he looked down at his prize baseball, it was doused in salt water and champagne. Since that moment, naturally, Figone has become just about as famous as the future Hall of Famer who hit that ball. He has done wall-to-wall interviews. He was invited by the Giants to be their guest Friday in a front-row box. And everyone tells him his baseball could be worth $100,000. But Figone -- who has amassed a tremendous memorabilia collection from his five years as a groundskeeper -- doesn't want the money. He just wants his baseball. "Certain people cherish certain things because they put a dollar value on them," he said. "But to me, this is more significant than money. Some day, when that sign in the park says, '182 Splash Hits,' I can say, 'I'm the one who got No. 1.' " And if he's out there again some night, and another ball comes flying toward him -- along with about 50 boats full of people trying to run him over for a baseball of their own -- will he have the courage to steer his raft into the bedlam one more time? "I have no reason to go for it," said Joseph Figone. "No other ball will ever mean what that ball means to me." Walkout of the week History will classify what happened in Milwaukee on April 29 as a major-league baseball game. But it didn't resemble any major-league baseball games we've ever witnessed. The Astros walked 14 times. The Brewers walked nine times. The losing team (the Brewers) gave up 10 runs -- on five hits. The winning team (the Astros) threw more balls (70) than strikes (69). It was that kind of day. Everyone in attendance should have gotten a free Walkman. Or, at the very least, a walky-talky. BB King should have performed the anthem. Bob Walk should have thrown out the first ball. A moment of silence for Walker Cooper would have been a nice touch. And all pitchers who issued a walk should have been given -- what else? -- their walking papers. "It couldn't have been a full moon, because it was a day game," said Astros broadcast-witticist Jim Deshaies. "But it almost looked like there was a force field over home plate and the ball kept shooting away from it. It was like something out of an old 'Lost in Space' -- an unpenetrable zone." The walk-of-life insanity included all of this: Brewers starter Everett Stull kicked off the proceedings by throwing eight straight balls, leading to a 44-pitch first inning in which Houston had more runs (three) than fair balls (two -- bloop single, sacrifice fly). Stull then went on to compile one of the funkiest lines ever: 3 1/3 IP, 1 H, 7 R, 7 ER, 9 BB, 3 K, 1 HBP. He was the second pitcher in the last 20 years to give up one hit in a game in which he also walked nine or more. The other: Randy Johnson, on July 17, 1991 (4-1-4-4-10-4) -- against (how perfect is this?) the Brewers. Stull was relieved by rookie Matt Williams, who fit in nicely by accumulating more walks (five) than outs (three). The Astros managed to bat around against those two in the fourth inning -- on one hit. Houston starter Scott Elarton did his part, too. He entered the fifth inning with a 10-0 lead -- and got just one more out (meaning he didn't get the win). Until Lyle Mouton hit a three-run homer off him, Elarton had managed the near-impossible feat of allowing 14 baserunners (eight walks, five hits, one hit batter) in 4 1/3 innings -- without giving up a run. So the two starters combined for this snazzy line: 8 IP, 7 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 17 BB, 4 K. That was the most walks, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, by any two starters in the same game since a J.R. Richard-John D'Acquisto match-up on May 4, 1975. The most spectacular feat of all, however, was turned in by the always-inventive Craig Biggio. He managed to reach base five times -- without putting a ball in play (three walks, two HBPs). "That's a first for me," he said. Then there was Ken Caminiti, who had two RBIs in this game before he got his first hit (on two bases-loaded walks). In the first six innings, there was exactly one half-inning (the top of the third) that didn't include either a walk or a hit batter. And we've heard of teams working on their running game -- but maybe these two have been working on their walking game. They combined for 630 yards of total offense just on walks. "I've got one question," Deshaies said. "If this was a walkathon, how much money would we have raised?" Supernatural of the week You don't draft and sign players like Kerry Wood. You invent them. Real people don't strike out 20 in a game before they can vote for president. Real people don't walk off a Texas prairie to win a rookie-of-the-year award before they're old enough to buy the champagne to celebrate it. And no way real people do what Kerry Wood did for the Cubs on Tuesday, in his first game back in the big leagues after Tommy John surgery. A six-inning three-hitter right out of the chute? A bunch of 97's on the radar gun? Hit a home run on his first swing in a year and a half? Hey, come on. We know real life when we see it. And that sure wasn't it. Asked to describe the mood of his teammates as all this was unfolding Tuesday, Cubs utility spokesman Jeff Huson could only express the same disbelief as the rest of us. "We were saying, 'You've gotta be kidding me. This can't really be happening,'" Huson reported. "Stephen Spielberg couldn't have written a better script." In fact, though, Kerry Wood has launched his own standards into such a ridiculously high orbit, it's going to take a lot more to impress us next time. You want to be a Spielberg character? OK, fine. Do more than beat the Astros. How about negotiating a new labor deal between innings? Now that would impress us. "Yeah, the least he could have done," Huson deadpanned, "was come back from a torn ligament and thrown a no-hitter or something. You expect a little more out of the guy." Oh, all right. Not really. But what Kerry Wood does do gets a little absurd sometimes. "In batting practice," Huson said, "he and I had a little home-run contest. And he beat me, 4-1. So after he hit the home run, I told him, 'Do something to impress me, will you? Hit one from the left side next time.' But he wouldn't do it." Meanwhile, fellow pitcher Andrew Lorraine had a suggestion for how Wood could provide some really noteworthy video footage. Lorraine told him: "Throw the first pitch. Then crumble to the ground. Then get up and say, 'Oh, I'm OK. Just kidding.' " But Wood wouldn't do that, either. Maybe next time. But for now, it's clear that if he wants to get the attention of his teammates -- or Week in Review -- in the future, he's going to have to do something extra cool, because at this point, these other theatrics are getting practically routine. "Everybody was all excited that he came back," Huson said, "and we were saying: What's the big deal? Everybody else gets dressed in a locker room. He gets dressed in a telephone booth." Cooler wars of the week It was another one of those homestands at baseball's only park without gravity -- Coors Field. Six games. 125 runs. And in no game did the winning team score under 12 runs. The Rockies allowed an average of 8.8 runs per game -- and won four out of six. One game into the homestand, the Rockies had hit 17 homers all season (in 23 games). Then they hit 15 in their next four games. But the biggest hits of all weren't delivered with bats. And they made no contact with baseballs. On back-to-back days, reeling Mets ace Mike Hampton scored a TKO of the water cooler in the visitors' dugout. And the next day, Rockies starter Masato Yoshii delivered a dazzling three-punch knockout of the home cooler. "Yoshii had really good form, I thought," Rockies coach-humorist Rich Donnelly reported. "He kept his elbows in. He had a nice, short jab. He could be the Roy Jones of the coolerweight division." But there was a down side to all those fisticuffs, we're afraid. And you spell it T-H-I-R-S-T. Hampton took out his cooler in the fifth round (oops, inning). Yoshii's was gone by the fourth. So by the ninth inning, after all that running around the bases, these guys would have paid 100,000 bucks for a bottle of Gatorade. "I think probably we should have more than one cooler at Coors Field," Donnelly proposed. "We need more like 10 in every dugout, because if you're a pitcher at Coors Field, you are going to get mad. Kevin Brown destroyed a TV set last year. And something has gotten destroyed pretty much every night since Coors opened. Maybe we should put up a heavy bag in the dugout, with a picture of the pitcher's mother-in-law." Wild pitches Box score line of the week Lima time in Houston sure isn't what it used to be. After giving up 13 hits, 12 runs and five homers to the Cubs in his previous start, Lima followed that act Tuesday with this stunner at Wrigley Field: 4 1/3 IP, 13 H, 10 R, 9 ER, 3 BB, 5 K and 3 HR, including one to fellow pitcher Kerry Wood. "I'm not gonna shoot myself," said Lima, who became the first pitcher to give up 10 runs or more in back-to-back starts in half a century. Last man to do it, according to the Elias Sports Bureau: Philadelphia A's left-hander Alex Kellner, who gave up 11 and 10 on Sept. 9 and 16, 1950. Lima also joins Paul Wagner and Jaime Navarro as the only pitchers in the last 10 years to give up 10 runs or more twice in the same season. Wing man of the week We reported last week on the travels of our favorite wandering man, Jeff Manto, after he was designated for assignment for the eighth time in his career. Well, he then became a free agent for the 10th time. And just as the swallows come back to Capistrano, Jeff Manto comes back to Buffalo. So he did. He began his seventh different stint with the Indians' organization by heading for their Triple-A team in Buffalo for the fourth time last week. Manto says he knows he leads the minor leagues in home runs "and hamburgers eaten." But he's also in favor of a consitutional amendment to invoke the 26-man roster. "I've got to talk to Don Fehr about that," Manto said. "If there was a 26-man roster, I'd have 40 years in the big leagues -- at least." Camera man of the week Some people will do anything to get on camera. Like Mike Lieberthal, for instance. While chasing a pop-up Wednesday, the Phillies catcher crashed full-bore into a TV camera in the first-base dugout, and somehow deflected the ball into the mitt of first baseman Rico Brogna for just your basic 2-3 foul-ball out. ("I'm hoping the ESPYs come calling," Brogna said of that play.) Then, the next day, Lieberthal tumbled into the third-base dugout, just dodging another camera. He didn't wind up with either put-out. But he did get major highlight-tape exposure. And don't think his teammates didn't notice. "I'm not sure what the hoopla is about," quipped Doug Glanville. "All catchers practiced the tip drill in spring training, over a lion pit with spikes. So a headfirst dive down a flight of stairs into the concrete camera pit is actually a routine play. Maybe I would be impressed if the camera pit was on fire." Extra men of the week The Tigers have finally figured out what they need to turn themselves around -- a rule that requires all games to go longer than nine innings. In the first seven games in which coach Bob Melvin filled in during manager Phil Garner's eight-game suspension, the Tigers went 0-4 in nine-inning games -- but 3-0 in games that went extra innings. So Garner told Booth Newspapers' Danny Knobler he has a tremendous plan to keep this roll going after his suspension ends. "I'm going to get thrown out in the ninth inning every night," Garner said. Sacrificial lambs of the week One of the most historic games ever played took place in Pittsburgh on April 29, when the Pirates and Reds combined for five sacrifice flies. That tied everybody's favorite major-league record. "Now that I've been a part of such a historic moment," Pirates SF-er Brian Giles told the Beaver County Times' John Perrotto, "does it mean that I'm going to the Hall of Fame?" Duel of the week Ken (I'm Not A Home Run Hitter) Griffey Jr. may have as many outright home-run titles as Mark McGwire (four). But to hear Griffey talk, he's a regular Otis Nixon compared to Big Mac. The two face off this weekend in Cincinnati. And Junior says: "For me to hit home runs where that guy hits them, I'd have to use an aluminum bat and stand on the pitcher's mound, maybe second base. It's like golf. They should make him use the old wood thing the old golfers used. And I should get to use aluminum." We're betting the Cardinals won't be approving that proposal. Legal eagle of the week We once again rejoin the mild-mannered poster boy for suspension injustice, Tigers coach Juan Samuel, for an update this week, before thousands begin marching in the street to support his plight. Asked how he planned to prepare for the appeal of his 15-game brawl suspension last week, Samuel had all his legal briefs in order. "I'm going to go watch 'Law and Order' to give me some pointers," he said. "That or 'L.A. Law.' " Must have worked, because Samuel got the suspension cut from 15 games to 10. After which Robert Fick (suspended for five games) announced: "I'm going to have Sammy represent me." But Bobby Higginson said he had no plans to hire Samuel to appeal his own suspension -- "because I have no case." Even with Samuel in his corner? "He could have Johnnie Cochran representing him," quipped Brad Ausmus. Trivia answer Jack Morris (won 20 in '92, won seven in '93), John Burkett (20 in '93, six in strike-shortened '94), Bill Swift (20 in '93, eight in strike-shortened '94). Jayson Stark is a senior writer at ESPN.com.		ALSO SEE Jayson Stark archive Stark: The mighty Braves Stark: April does matter