Sports
McFarlane is an avid baseball fan; he briefly tried to achieve a pro career in the sport as a young adult. McFarlane bought at auction multiple balls from Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa's 1998 race to establish a record for the greatest number of home runs hit in a single season. McFarlane owns Sosa's 33rd, 61st and 66th home run balls, and McGwire's first, 63rd, 67th, 68th, 69th and 70th. (McGwire's 61st was the ball which tied Roger Maris' then-record, while McGwire's 70th, bought by McFarlane at auction for US $3 million, set a new record at the time — broken in 2001 by Barry Bonds.) He later purchased Bonds' record setting 73rd home run ball for $450,000.
McFarlane, who is a former minority owner of the Edmonton Oilers, designed the logo used on the team's alternate third jersey, which debuted in 2001.
Read more about this topic: Todd McFarlane
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Come, my Celia, let us prove
While we may the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)