But how do we know that this bat is really that bat? "We don't," said Tellem.

"The chain of evidence was obviously broken," said Barry Holt, a Chicago lawyer. "No one saw that particular bat go from one hand to another to another."

"That raises a whole interesting scenario," said Bud Selig, baseball's acting commissioner.

Baseball's gumshoes agree on the burglary's physical details: Someone as yet unidentified apparently climbed through the false ceiling of the visiting manager's office in Comiskey Park during Friday night's game between the White Sox and Cleveland, then crawled, bat in hand, about 30 feet through dust, pipes and electrical wiring, and entered the umpires' room.

Just as he (or she) had removed tiles in the ceiling of the manager's office to climb up, he removed tiles in the ceiling of the umpires' room to climb down. He jumped onto a refrigerator and then swiped a bat that had been placed nearby and put another in its place.

The removed bat was Belle's. Belle has been charged by the league with having hollowed out his bat and adding rubber or corking to lighten the bat and increase bat speed.

The bat had been confiscated in the first inning of Friday's game when Chicago Manager Gene Lamont ran out to the plate when Belle stepped in to hit and demanded that Belle's bat be investigated. Umpire Dave Phillips removed the bat -- a manager is allowed one such protest per game -- and gave it to the guard of the umpires' room, Vince Fresso.