Try telling baseball fan Phil Ozersky that everything about Mark McGwire's 70-home run summer of 1998 was bad or fake. The real comfort Ozersky's ailing dad, Herbert, enjoys down in sunny Boynton Beach, Fla., suggests something different.

Herbert Ozersky, 77, suffered a stroke in 1986 that paralyzed the left side of his body. He was living outside St. Louis 12 years later when his son, Phil, a genetic researcher at Washington University, caught McGwire's 70th home run at Busch Stadium after the ball bounced out of the hands of two co-workers.

One of the first things Phil did with the $2.7 million he received in an auction for the McGwire ball was build a handicapped-accessible home in Florida so his dad could escape Midwestern winters more than a couple of weeks at a time.

"He was a snowbird and he's more comfortable being able to stay down there longer so it was nice I could help my parents retire," Ozersky, 37, said in a phone interview. "Other than their house down there, I didn't go that crazy buying stuff."

Indeed, Ozersky still drives the same 1994 light blue Ford Probe he was driving before he became a millionaire. He has made six-figure donations to charities of his choice. His biggest perk may be the Cardinals season tickets he purchased on the first-base side 20 rows from the owner's box.

When Ozersky went back to work, "I think it definitely surprised some people," he said. The largesse allowed his wife, Amanda -- the same woman he was dating at the time -- to stay home and raise their two young daughters. Shortly after the auction in January 1999, the couple moved from their rented home into a nice house in the same cul-de-sac as Ozersky's brother and sister in Ballwin, Mo.

Yes, Ballwin.

McGwire's admission Monday that he used steroids disappointed a lot of people who cheered him wildly that summer of '98. To many the revelation stained moments they considered priceless. To Ozersky, the memories always will be worth $2.7 million.

Out of every negative comes a positive.

Without the national euphoria created by the home run race between McGwire and Sammy Sosa, entrepreneur Todd McFarlane never may have felt compelled to provide the Ozerskys generational wealth in exchange for a $3.05 million souvenir. (That was McFarlane's total cost after paying Guernsey's Baseball Auction.)

"It was much more fun than a winning lottery ticket because I'm a baseball fan," Ozersky said.

The baseball fan in Ozersky shrugged when McGwire confessed. The scientist in him always knew.

"For anyone believing he wasn't on (steroids) is beyond naive," Ozersky said.

Without excusing McGwire, Ozersky pointed out that Major League Baseball lacked a tough steroid-testing policy until 2002, so technically the Cardinals slugger broke "the rule of the land" but not the rules of baseball. He compared McGwire taking performance-enhancing drugs to Babe Ruth drinking and carousing during Prohibition.

"People are being a little hypocritical with McGwire," Ozersky said.

Out in Tempe, Ariz., McFarlane takes a similarly pragmatic view of baseball history many consider tainted. McFarlane, a Canadian comic book mogul who played college baseball before sustaining a career-ending knee injury, scoffed when asked if he felt McGwire's admission cheapened his investment.

"I don't feel cheated at all," McFarlane said in a phone interview. "I have a perspective of the skinny center fielder who wanted to play in the majors.

"If somebody had held out their hand with two pills and said, 'Todd, you could gain 10 pounds if you swallow these,' I would have asked if they were poison later. I am not excusing it. But I can understand the rationale."

An unapologetic collector of sports memorabilia, the baseball junkie spent $2 million more on seven other McGwire and Sosa home run balls from that '98 season to complete the McFarlane collection. Later, McFarlane also purchased Barry Bonds' 73rd home run ball for $450,000.

You can find that ball, McGwire's 70th and Sosa's 66th in a lock box in an undisclosed location -- about $3.75 million worth of rawhide. But you won't find any regrets.

"People will ask, 'Why in the hell would you spend $3 million on a baseball ... [but] I have the top three home run balls in the record books," said McFarlane, who considers the McGwire ball his most precious.

Its monetary worth started dropping the minute McFarlane walked through the auction house doors and dropped again this week.

"It's like a car that loses its value the minute you drive it out of the lot -- well, I just crashed the car," he said. "But people are still going to want the car James Dean was driving in when he got killed. So it's still cool. It's infamous."

Initially, the ball brought Ozersky more fame than he wanted. The Cardinals wanted him to turn over No. 70 immediately in exchange for merchandise, but he wanted to meet McGwire before making a decision. He didn't -- and has met Big Mac only once.

Instead, Ozersky went home that Sept. 27, 1998, slept on it and wrote McGwire a letter explaining why he was keeping the ball.

"I just said it was for the best interests of me and my family," Ozersky said. "I believed I could do a lot of good because of that ball."

At least someone did.

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dhaugh@tribune.com