The Untouchable

After his 1995 acquittal in the slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, Simpson is about as close to an untouchable as this country can get. Pete Rose was banned from baseball for betting on the game, but some people still like him. He even sells a limited-edition baseball, signed by him, with the inscription, "I'm sorry I bet on baseball." People buy them because they like Pete Rose.

Vick, the disgraced Atlanta Falcons former quarterback, was a big name as recently as this summer. Then he pleaded guilty to taking part in dogfighting, a practice Americans place just above child pornography, and today his material has vanished. Bill Huggins, co-owner of the House of Cards in Silver Spring, had a signed Vick jersey in his window this summer, at a price of $275.

After Vick's guilty plea, "a kid who works downstairs asked if he could buy it. I asked him what he'd give me for it. He said, '$25,' and I said, 'Sold!,' " Huggins recounts. Similarly, he has an early Simpson trading card in near-mint condition on sale for $45. He's had it for years. No takers.

As Huggins points out, Simpson had notable on-field accomplishments, but nobody likes him. If people don't like you, there's no power, no hip factor to owning things that you have used, touched or signed. Your memorabilia is yesterday's trash -- the one thing in life nobody collects.

"I don't sell O.J. stuff, I won't touch it," says Jerry Miller, who has run the Miller Boys, a sports memorabilia business, for the past 35 years, based out of his home in Warminster, Pa. "I've been offered Simpson stuff. I wouldn't take it for free. . . . He got away with it [the murders], but a lot of people, including me, think he did it. Then he was cocky about it."

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So what was it Simpson was after in Vegas?

According to the manifest released last week by the Las Vegas Police Department, there were a couple of hundred signed pictures of Simpson and 10 specially inscribed footballs. The pictures are pretty much worthless.

The footballs are another matter.

"One (1) inflated 'Wilson' brown leather football bearing 'Juice 1000 YDS. 10-29-1973. Bills 23 Chiefs 14. O.J. Simpson,' " reads one entry. This would be a game or commemorative ball noting when Simpson topped the 1,000-yard mark for that season. There's a similar one from when he scored four touchdowns in a game against New England in 1975, and one that reads: "For OJ Simpson from Detroit Lions Nov. 25, 1976. NFL Record 273 YDS Rushing." This would be, if proven authentic, a game or commemorative ball from when Simpson set what was then the league's single-game rushing record.

Let's go back to Hitt, the football price guide analyst, at Beckett's.

If real, the balls might be worth about $1,000 to $3,000 each, with the rushing record ball going for as much as $5,000. Taken cumulatively, those 10 balls might fetch $20,000 or $30,000 at auction.

"There are serious collectors of game-used, one-of-a-kind equipment, which is a hot sector of the market right now, and those balls would sell," Hitt says.

If Simpson could prove to the court they belonged to him, he might actually claim them -- only to see them reclaimed by Fred Goldman, father of one of the deceased. Simpson owes him, at this point, $38 million, which is gaining $10,000 per day in interest, for a civil judgment that held Simpson responsible for the murders.

And here is the final irony: Even if Goldman gets them, the balls have been so downgraded because of Simpson's notoriety that they are worth a fraction of their former value, Hitt says.

"More than $1,000 for a football sounds like a lot of money, but it's really not in this market. If not for Simpson's legal troubles, a game-used ball by a Heisman winner and Hall of Famer, those balls would be worth two or three times as much."

O.J. Simpson, shorn of the magic he once possessed, is an emblem of the fact that the star athlete doesn't possess the magic, the fans give it to him. The fan giveth, and the fan taketh away.