COOPERSTOWN - The fashion designer who bought Barry Bond's record breaking ball decided to give his investment to the Hall of fame late Tuesday. The ball arrived almost four hours after hall of fame officials originally thought they were not going to get it.
 
Hall of Fame spokesman Brad Horn, says The Hall originally did not expect to get the historic home run ball because Ecko wanted to just loan it to the museum. That goes against hall policy as they only take artifacts if the owner is willing to permanently donate the memorabilia. 

After a change of heart, the 756th home run ball, branded with an asterisk arrived to Cooperstown around eight Tuesday night.
According to horn, a black SUV pulled up in front of the hall and a representative of fashion designer Marc Ecko handed over the piece of history. Ecko bought the ball for $752,467 then later held a poll question as to what to do with the ball.

The option to brand an asterisk on it, signifying the steroid scandal surrounding Barry Bonds, overwhelmingly won.
Asterisk or no asterisk, Hall officials are elated to have the ball in their possession.

"Certainly it's a piece that allows us as a history museum to tell the story of the home run chase and then of this unique manner in which the ball came into the museum for future generations. As collectors and interpreters of items related to baseball and history having that donation enables us to do that," said Brad Horn of the Hall.

The ball is not out on display to the public just yet. Horn says it will take at least a couple of weeks for the paper work to be complete before it gets displayed. Once it is, you can look for the ball on the second floor in the "today's game" section, the same place Bond's batting helmet is from that same game he broke the record.

Because The Hall has those helmets to mark the record breaking home-run, they were not interested in the loan option of the ball. Horn says had they not had anything to showcase from that game, of Bond's, they would have considered displaying the ball for a sort period of time.