That ball, caught by 21-year-old college student Matthew Murphy (who emerged from the fray scraped, bleeding, and bruised), is estimated to be worth at least $500,000. It may end up on McFarlane's shopping list "if it's a reasonable price," he says.

"But 756 isn't the ball, it's a ball," he says. "The ball that I'd be interested in is the last one he hits before he says the words ‘I retire.' I'll save my money for the ball."
 
In McFarlane's opinion, questions about Bonds' possible steroid use will fade with time and that the ball will have value as long as Bonds' name is in the record books.

McFarlane is the first to admit that there was more to his spending spree than just marketing and business savvy. He has had a lifelong passion for baseball.  

After graduating from high school in Calgary, Alberta, McFarlane attended Eastern Washington University on a baseball scholarship. After college, a scout recruited McFarlane to play outfield on a semiprofessional, summer-league team in British Columbia. He made his big push for professional baseball in 1984, trying out for the Toronto Blue Jays farm team in Alberta. It was only after his coaches placed him 26th on a roster of 25 players that McFarlane turned to his other passion: comic-book monsters.

Broke and newly married to his high school sweetheart, McFarlane received scores of rejection letters before finally landing work. He joined Marvel Comics in the mid-1980s and quickly became its top artist, winning thousands of geeky fans in the process.

It was McFarlane who revamped Spider-Man in the late 1980s, giving him a more stylized appearance, and doing away with Peter Parker's bell-bottoms. Soon McFarlane's Spider-Man surpassed X-Men to become Marvel's top-selling title.

But McFarlane chafed under Marvel's controls. One day in 1992, he drew a villain being killed with a sword thrust through the eyeball. He was told to tone it down. And that was all for McFarlane.

"I guess we're all just wired different," he says. "I just got to the point where I got tired of people telling me what I can and can't do in my life."

McFarlane persuaded six of his colleagues to leave Marvel and form an independent company, Image Comics. Then he began drawing a murdered secret agent reincarnated by the devil as a dark superhero, known as Spawn. The debut issue sold 1.7 million copies, a record for an independent comic publisher, and McFarlane became a rich man.

"We're not built as artists to think about the other stuff," McFarlane says. "But I found that if you don't learn business, you're not going to have opportunities to drive the art."

Spawn sold anywhere from 750,000 to 900,000 units a month for much of the 1990s, generating as much as $800,000 a month in profit for McFarlane, according to Larry Marder, president of Image Comics at the time, and currently head of McFarlane Toys. That left McFarlane with plenty of cash for his next venture.

McFarlane found that venture after inking a deal to turn Spawn into a movie starring Martin Sheen. Toy companies wanted to license the figures in his comics. But the deals they were offering would have denied McFarlane creative control. McFarlane says he saw the same corporate shackles he had seen at Marvel-and the same opportunity.

With the proceeds from Spawn, McFarlane used sophisticated machines to scan figures and hired sculptors to replicate faces. He also had a bit of luck: At the time, many companies were moving manufacturing to Asia, which cut his costs and allowed him to pour more resources into quality.