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8 . SEE A DIFFERENT GAME . 8/27/07

I’m sitting across a couple of gyros plates from one lucky SOB. It says so in big, fat letters on his T-shirt:

Lucky. But that’s as close to vanity as Philip Ozersky could get if he tried—which he hasn’t since hurtling his 26-year-old, 180-pound body onto Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball on September 27, 1998, and selling it at an auction 15 weeks later for more mon-ey than any Barry Bonds ballhawk could dream of.

!ree million big ones. You’d think that would

change a guy, wouldn’t you? Here’s how it has changed Oz-ersky:

■ He bought a new house—across the street from his sister, Sharon, whose daughter baby-sits Philip and wife Amanda’s two little girls.

■ He bought a vacation home—a two-bedroom villa in Boynton Beach, Fla., so his father, who had a debilitating stroke in 1986, and mother can escape the St. Louis cold "ve months a year. “I am a 21-year survivor,” Herb Ozersky says, “and I know that house has added at least a couple of years to my life.”

■ He travels a lot—to Arizona to see the in-laws.

■ He bought Rams season tickets (“I go with my dad,” Philip says. “It’s the one time a week when for sure I see him”) and Cardinals season tickets (“I share those with Sharon; we’re the baseball fans in the family”).

And that’s about it. Well, save for the roughly

$250,000 he donated to the American Cancer Society, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and Cardinal Care.

!is is a guy who drives the same light-blue 1994 Ford Probe that he bought a#er graduating from college. “It’s just a car,” he says. “It gets me where I need to go.” Of course, he totally splurged on a family vehicle—a Honda Odyssey minivan a#er the girls were born.

!is is a guy who cleared about 100 times his annual salary with his windfall in ’98—and works the same job nine years later, analyzing DNA research for the Washington University School of Medicine’s

Genome Sequencing Center. “I could go out into the industry and make more money,” he says, “but I believe in the project. Twenty or 30 years down the road, a person won’t have the genetic propensity to get breast cancer.”

!is is a guy who grabs lunch at the same dives, plays so#ball in the same park and sits down at the same nickel-dime card games. “People who win the lottery and blow all their

money, they probably don’t stay grounded,” he says. “!ey have to switch their friends because who knows how good of friends they really are, right? I’m de"nitely not speaking from experience.”

Among those friends is my next-door neighbor, who introduced me to Ozersky at one of those card games. It’s hard not to laugh when a millionaire says, “I’ll see your quarter and raise you half a buck.” Ozersky got his White Castles handed to him that night, but it was an aberra-tion—he has always had a bit of a lucky streak.

A few weeks ago, he chipped in from 75 yards and sank a 45-foot putt while play-ing in a scramble with Aman-da’s parents. “!ose were my

two contributions to the team,” he laughs. His buddies still talk about the time he $ipped a basketball over his head while falling out of

bounds and swished it. !e small fortune he invested in stocks in 1999? He never really lost any of it a#er the market began to plum-met. He met Amanda in the same Busch Stadium party box where McGwire’s 70th home run would land one year later. On the day Ozersky dived on the money ball, he missed a Rams home game for the "rst time since the franchise

had moved from Los Angeles. Herb owned the Rams tickets then. !e

seats are a little better now.

It’s gotta be the genesGrab a big-money home run ball one minute, start living the high life the next, right? Not so for researcher—yes, he kept his job!—Philip Ozersky.

MY TURN >>>>>>>>>> sgreenberg@sportingnews.com

Steve GreenbergBetter than my record indicates

It’s hard not to laugh when a millionaire says, ‘I’ll see your quarter and raise you half a buck.’

Before he sold the ball, Ozersky says public support ran 50-50 for selling it. But since then, not one person has told him he should have given it to McGwire.