A baseball mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes and Scotland Yard surfaced Saturday at Comiskey Park with the discovery of a stolen bat-not just any bat, but the lumber confiscated from Cleveland's Albert Belle, who is among the American League leaders in home runs and runs batted in.



At the request of White Sox manager Gene Lamont, who suspected Belle's bat was filled with cork, the umpires, in the first inning of Friday night's game, impounded the stick for safekeeping and shipment to the AL office in New York for X-rays.



In a thievery perhaps without precedent in diamond history, the culprit crawled 30 feet to the umpires' dressing room, broke in through the ceiling, lifted Belle's bat and replaced it with a model used by Paul Sorrento, one of Belle's teammates.



"It was definitely a break-in," said umpire Dave Phillips, who had taken Belle's bat and given it to Vince Fresso, custodian of the umpires' quarters.



Fresso put the bat behind Phillips' large equipment suitcase and covered it with Phillips' civilian clothing. Fresso locked the room and watched the first three innings on the bench. He discovered the theft in about the sixth inning when he noticed clumps of ceiling insulation on the floor. Ceiling tiles in two locations were askew and the metal support strips twisted out of shape.



"This is a serious crime," said White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, a view subsequently endorsed by acting Commissioner Bud Selig.



Selig, an amateur Hawkshaw and an avid reader of mystery novels, said: "We're going to get to the bottom of this."



An investigation began at noon Saturday when the umpires' quarters were dusted for fingerprints. The probe is being led by Kevin Hallinan, a former FBI agent who flew in from New York.



Hallinan arrived at the scene of the crime two hours before Saturday night's game.



Sox General Manager Ron Schueler conceded there is an "ongoing investigation" but refused further comment.



Mike Hargrove, the Cleveland manager, said, "I don't know if I should be surprised, shocked or outraged."



Umpire Phillips offered some of the details.



"I've seen tampered bats before," he said. "When I looked at Belle's bat, it appeared there was nothing wrong with it."



He then showed the bat to two of the other umpires, neither of whom could detect tampering.



"Usually, what they do is drill a hole through the top of the bat and put in a long piece of tubular cork," Phillips continued. "Once they slide the cork in, they put the top back on, glue it, and sand it down. Sometimes they paint it. I'm not sure if it was painted black or a dark brown. I think it was painted black."



Phillips insisted it had the feel of a "shiny new bat." The replacement, Phillips said, was "dirty, extremely dirty and sticky with pine tar in several places. It looked like it had been used for a long time."



Fresso didn't advise Phillips of the break-in until after the game. A half-hour later, AL President Bobby Brown was awakened in his New York hotel and advised of the theft.



Marty Springstead, AL supervisor of umpires, was contacted along with Hallinan.



"This is bizarre," Springstead said in a telephone interview from his New Jersey home. "In 3l years (in baseball), you think you've seen it all but you haven't."



The mystery may never be solved. One of he nagging questions is this: Why didn't the culprit replace Belle's bat with one of Belle's five or six spares instead of planting the Sorrento model.



The investigation is expected to continue, but already there are some clues. According to a reliable source, the principal suspects are three members of the traveling Cleveland party who are not in uniform.



The finger is also being pointed at an identified and fervent Cleveland fan who made the trip here from Shaker Heights, Ohio.