Imagine this scene: Barry Bonds slams his 700th home run out of SBC Park sometime next month and offers $20 to the fan who wrestles the ball from an armada of angry kayakers before it is waterlogged in McCovey Cove. Bonds would be deemed a miser and the fan would probably sue him for mental cruelty.

Yet when Babe Ruth hit his 700th, on July 13, 1934, he got away with the $20 swap.

Ruth hit that homer out of Navin Field in Detroit off Tommy Bridges in the third inning of a 4-2 Yankees victory over the Tigers. According to an article in The New York Times, Ruth shouted, ''I want that ball!'' before he circled the bases.

Unidentified ''emissaries'' were then dispatched to hunt for the ball; they returned with Leonard Beals, the youngster who retrieved it.

Beals was taken to the Yankees' dugout, where he gave Ruth the ball, and Ruth handed him $20 and a signed ball. In a photograph, both looked mildly satisfied.