Quotes of the Day

Matt Murphy, the lucky New Yorker who caught the historic 756th career home run hit by Barry Bonds in San Francisco earlier this month, is about to cash in. The online bidding war for the Bonds ball began Tuesday, and ends on Sept. 15, at scpauctions.com. Murphy, 21, caught up with TIME's Sean Gregory to talk about winning the Bonds lottery.

Take us inside the big moment, when you caught Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run in San Francisco.

High fly ball. We [Murphy was at the game with a friend, Amir Kamal] see it tracking. We think it's close, but it's just out of our reach. It goes about 30 feet to my right, and about six rows behind me. And then ... it bounced. It hit a fan's hands, and then hit the pavement, which made it about eye level with me. I immediately, without even thinking, dove head first into the pile. You see something, and you instinctively know just to grab it. So I got my hands on it, and I immediately covered the surface of the ball with my hands, and held onto it. And just waited for the pain.

It was a wild scrum for the ball. How did you not die in there?

Everyone landed on my leg. So that pressure hurt the most. There was a point when I couldn't really breathe. But I wasn't worried about breathing. I was thinking about my grip. Hold on to it. Hold on to the motherf----r. (Laughs). Then, I'd say about a minute later, I hear somebody shouting 'Does somebody have it? Does somebody have it?' I thought that was some fan. So I immediately started shouting, "I got it. I got it. Get the bleep off me." But it was a cop who was saying all this. So as someone is picking me up, I'm nudging him off me, like, "Get off me, man." The cop says, "I got you, son. I got you." And I think, "Oh, good, a cop." I couldn't really stand up. I couldn't really move my leg. So they pick me up, and they ask, "Can you walk?" I say, "Barely." He says, "Let's go," and we made it down to a grounds' crew office. A Major League Baseball authenticator checked the ball, put a little sticker on it, took a picture, then that was it.

How did you sleep that first night?

I didn't really sleep. We switched hotels, and the hotel offered to put the ball in their safe, in the bank manager's office. I didn't really like that idea. So I went up to the suite, and there was this electronic lockbox. I put it in there, put in the combo, took a deep breath...you know, like, whew. I took a shower, made some phone calls, came out, changed the combo, went downstairs, got some champagne, came back up, changed the combo again, and spent the rest of the night in front of the door. Paranoid. Paranoid. Paranoid. They're coming to get me at any minute now, and I'm going to fight them off. We put it in a safe deposit box the next morning.

You had stopped in San Francisco for a few days before going to Australia on vacation. Were you able to relax Down Under, knowing about the commotion that was waiting for you in the States?

Normally, I'm not that much of a braggart. But I wanted to tell everybody about something of this magnitude, and you're in a country where they don't know what baseball is. So I had to keep it to the phones and Internet. It was a good vacation — I was on a movie set most of the time [visiting my friend's sister, the actress Abigail Breslin], on the beach. When you leave a vacation, you're usually upset. I was excited to leave, because I was going back to a whole different world.

My parents suggested that I don't go to Australia. I'm like, "No. I'm going to Australia." I set out to California to go to Australia. I want to see this through.

At first, you contemplated keeping the ball. How much did a potential hefty tax bill for your catch play into your decision to sell it?

Several people I consulted told me I would be taxed on this. But that was a fraction of the decision to sell the ball. I originally wanted to keep it. But you have to have a nice house with a big living room and a trophy case to put the ball in. You need a very large and expensive security system, because it'll be gone the next day.

The ball Mark McGwire hit for his 70th home run during his then record-breaking '98 season sold for $3 million, before the steroid suspicions clouded him. Due to Bonds' suspected steroid use, and the fact that he is one of the least liked players in baseball, a popular estimated sale price for your ball is $500,000. Seeing that difference, are you mad at Bonds?

If it wasn't for Barry Bonds, I wouldn't be in this situation. I'm madder at the media for blowing it out of proportion. Maybe they're telling the truth; maybe he's doing all this. I don't know. But I'm not directly angry at Bonds. There's no malice towards him.

You made a pre-game pact to split the profits from the sale of the ball, 51%-49%, with your friend Amir Kamal, who attended the game with you. Are you really going to stick with that?

Yeah, I'm going to stick to it. He's one of my close friends — we made a deal. As ludicrous as the deal may sound, we still made a deal. And I'm not that type of person.

Do you regret the deal a little bit?

A little bit. He didn't do thaaaaat much. But he helped out, he was there, and if he had caught it, he would have cut me the same deal, and stuck to it.

How do you plan on spending the money?

I'm going to do the right things with it. Invest it, start a business, a retirement fund. Who knows? It's still a little early. I don't have the money yet. And I don't know how much I'm working with.

A lot of people work their whole life and won't make the kind of money you've fallen into. All you've done is catch a baseball. Do you feel any guilt about that?

There are so many things out there — people scamming people, making millions of dollars. I feel kind of bad for people who have honestly busted their asses their entire life and have not made it yet. But I don't feel guilty. I just got lucky. Winning a $70 million lotto ticket takes no skill at all. Anyone can win it.

What's the minimum sale price for the ball that will make you happy?

I paid $200 to go to that game. I'm walking away in the plus, either way. Everyone is throwing around this $3 million figure — "last time, he made so much money." Whatever. I walked into that stadium down $200. I'm walking out plus however much it sells for. I'm going to be happy. The numbers people have thrown around, they're more than what I paid to go to the game.

Though you almost had to give up some of that to a San Francisco cab driver, right?

We get into the cab at the San Francisco airport to go to the hotel at Fisherman's Wharf. I looked at the meter, and it was $25 after five minutes. We were like, "What? That's ridiculous." So it gets up to $65, and we're passing the stadium, oddly enough. We're just running our mouths, like "We have tickets to the game. If we catch the ball, we're going to come into some money. What if we don't pay for this cab fare right now, but if I catch the ball, I'll give you two to three grand." He starts laughing, and he's like, "No, no, no thank you. I'll take the money." His loss.

• Sean Gregory
• Matt Murphy, who came up with Bonds' record-setting ball, talks to TIME about the online auction that just started