Fan predicted he'd catch Bonds' 756 HR

Matt Murphy, 21, of Elmhurst, is selling the ball to invest for his future

Jim Baumbach

3:54 PM EDT, September 5, 2007

Matt Murphy doesn't want to come off as arrogant, doesn't want to sound pompous, doesn't want to seem entitled. That's why the 21-year-old from Elmhurst has said since the day he caught Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756th home run that his goal when he bought Giants tickets for August 7th was to witness history.

Today, Murphy revealed for the first time his true intentions.

Before he left home for the West Coast, which was a one-day stop en route to a vacation in Australia, he boldly predicted to his coworkers that Bonds would hit the record-breaking home run the night he was there and that he would come away with the ball.

When he finally got a chance to check his cell phone after San Francisco police officers whisked him away from the scrum, the majority of the first calls were from his coworkers. They were stunned to see him on television in his Mets jersey, holding his head in awe as he was pulled from the crowd with the ball, exactly how he told them it would take place.

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"I had people from work calling me like crazy because I had told them I would be there wearing my Mets jersey and I would be catching that ball," said Murphy, who supervises contractors at a Manhattan residential building. "If you go to my work and ask the guys there, they'll say he called it a week before. I'd be wearing a Mets jersey and I would come out with that ball."

Now, that ball is up for auction at Sotheby's, with the top bid currently at $177,156. The bidding ends Sept. 15 and officials are expecting it to finish at $500,000. Speaking today at Sotheby's on York Avenue between 71rst and 72nd in Manhattan, Murphy said he plans to use the money toward investments for his future.

"I'm going to be investing or buying property or doing something smart that's going to set me up for the future," Murphy said. He originally wanted to keep the ball, but worried about tax ramifications. "Financially, I would have gotten killed by the taxes," Murphy added.

He certainly had no shortage of people advising him. Within a day of catching the ball and having his photo plastered across hundreds of newspapers and Web sites, so many people contacted him offering their services, including supposed long-lost friends and classmates.

"Everyone was trying to be my agent, everyone was trying to be manager, everyone was trying to be my financial consultant," said Murphy, who was a part of Archbishop Molloy's Class of 2003. "Everyone wants a piece and I don't even know who these people are anymore."

The first people he called after his big catch were his parents, in part because he thought someone was going to have to fly to San Francisco to take his investment back to New York while he went to Australia. But he said officials from the San Francisco Police Department helped him determine a better plan. He checked out of his hotel that night, moved to a different one and used the name of a police officer. When he returned to San Francisco, he stayed under the name, Arnold Palmer.

While he was in Australia, the ball remained in a safe deposit box in a San Francisco bank. By the time he returned, the agent he picked from the William Morris Agency had the deal in place with Sotheby's. The auction house had the ball insured and contracted a car service to transport it back to its New York offices.

Now all Murphy has to wait to see how much money he's going to get. He still plans to give 49 percent of the profit with his friend, Amir Kamal, who pulled people off him during the scrum for the ball. That was the deal they brokered before they entered the stadium. "It's going to take both of us to get out of the stadium with this ball," Murphy had told Kamal. So they decided the catcher would get 51 percent, the blocker 49 percent.

Murphy, of course, realizes the cloud of steroids that hovers over Bonds' numbers will have a negative effect on the price, even though he dismisses it. "Personally, even if he was on steroids," Murphy said, "that's a lot of home runs." It's going to be a lot of money, too.