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Location: San Francisco, Calif. | Ballpark: AT&T Park (41,915) | Spring Training: Scottsdale, Ariz.
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New Yorker who captured 756 ball 'just a nice college kid'

NEW YORK -- Matt Murphy's stopover in San Francisco included a pretty wild ride, and it wasn't on a cable car.

 

The 21-year-old college student who grew up near Shea Stadium emerged from a mad scramble at AT&T Park on Tuesday night with a bloodied face and the city's most-prized souvenir: the ball from Barry Bonds' record 756th home run.

"I won the lottery," Murphy told the Daily News in a story posted on its website Wednesday. "I'm scraped up but nothing serious."

Murphy said the ball was "under lock and key."

"I'm going to be smart about what I do with it," he said. "Funny enough, I'm only keeping 51 percent of what the ball brings."

Murphy said the rest would go to a friend who went with him to the game, wearing an Alex Rodriguez jersey.

Murphy had a layover in San Francisco on his way to visit a friend in Australia. As of Wednesday, he was planning to catch a later flight.

One of Murphy's neighbors said the family is born-and-bred from Queens and that his mother grew up in the home.

"I think it's extraordinary, what a stroke of good luck. I hope they get a lot of money. They certainly deserve it. They're a very, very, very nice family," John Kroeger said.

Wearing a Mets jersey, Murphy went to the stadium and took his seat in the right-center field seats to see the Giants play Washington.

Then in the fifth inning, Bonds struck. The slugger sent a drive into the stands to break Hank Aaron's home run record, setting off a scrum.

"The first thing I saw once it hit was I'm sure somebody was coming out of that pile bloodied," Philadelphia Phillies star Ryan Howard said. "I'm sure they were in there scratching, clawing, scraping, punching, kicking, doing whatever they could do to get that ball."

That's about what happened, Murphy said.

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