By Mike Kahn
CBS SportsLine Executive Editor
Aug. 23, 1998

In the event there was some degree of uncertainty, it's gone. If we didn't know how closely entwined sports and capitalistic greed have become, we do now.

It's one thing when people have paraded into public gatherings, pretending to be athletes, if only for kicks. Most of the time, it's to gain entrance into an event where they otherwise couldn't be noticed. Other times, it's people who had just escaped psychiatric wards. Other times, which by definition is too often, it has been for financial reward.

And nobody has ever really defined degrees of fraud because fraud can only be defined as felonious wrongful misrepresentation.

But to forge an umpire's signature?

It doesn't get any more pathetic than this.

LAST WEEK, IT WAS REPORTED THAT Major League Baseball is investigating American League umpire Al Clark for the sale of baseballs from the perfect game pitched in May by New York Yankee lefty David Wells. All four umpires who worked the game have been cleared, sources say, but Clark is still being checked out.

Mark Lewis, a memorabilia dealer from Long Island, bought 14 balls with letters authenticating the signatures of Wells and Clark. He paid $300 apiece for the baseballs. There seems to be some discrepancy over how many he sold at $1,000 each. There is no divergence of opinion when it comes to where he got the balls.

The New Jersey man's name is Rich Gressle, also a dealer in baseball memorabilia. He also has known Clark for quite some time. It seems he has consistently made statements that he forged signatures, clearing Clark. What we don't know is whether he's covering up for his old buddy or not.

You see, the cover-up seems to be the key to authenticity these days.

It matters little whether you are a small-time distributor of sports merchandise or president of the United States.

At least Gressle didn't forge the signature of Monica Lewinsky. He didn't even speak to Kenneth Starr.

THIS IS HOW BAD GREED IN SPORTS HAS GROWN . . . comparing this story to ever-ludicrous political arena of our grand country. It used to be you could just count on boxing promoters, managers and the fighters conning each other out of money, or being bought off by organized crime.

Nonetheless, boxing remains the home of the most unsavory folks in sports. Too bad it's becoming insidious. There are a number of reasons. People have continued to find new ways to make money over the past 25 years as the value of sports, its franchises and athletes have exploded by virtue of television exposure.

More competitors than ever are household names, which makes their products considerably more valuable. That means their shoes, socks, shirts, hats, wristbands, elbow pads, knee pads and that's not to mention any of the above being autographed. The next thing you know, there will be mouthpieces stamped with signatures.

Maybe it doesn't even matter whether Clark was involved, or not. And what value would his signature have on the balls anyway, considering he didn't even work the game. Wells, much to nobody's surprise, wanted to know how that happened.

How could somebody else have the baseballs when he had them? It was, after all, his perfect game. Then again, that's fraud. That's how sports have become devalued in spirit and overvalued in price. It's why the owners of the NBA teams are distraught over the players being millionaires while the players are perturbed at the billionaire owners.

IT'S ALL OUT OF proportion. This is the latest and greatest view of absurdity in the 1998 version of sports in America.

There is the theory that if people are dumb enough to fall for these stunts, they deserve to be ripped off. But to condone such activity would be far worse. For some reason, Gressle is initially coming off as honorable for trying to keep Clark out of it.

Honorable? Selling baseballs with feigned signatures is more than merely unsavory conduct, it is against the law. It has happened in the past and always will in the future because there is so much money in and around sports. And nobody who would spend $1,000 on an autographed baseball could be confused with mainstream America.

This just shows how people have come to different conclusions over what to do with their disposable income -- which in this case may just as well have gone into the disposal. It's the second switch on the right.