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88 MINUTES | COOLIDGE CORNER

Back in the fall of 2001, after juiced-up home-run automaton Barry Bonds’s record-setting 73rd shot was caught by Alex Popov, the crowd surged, Popov went down, and Patrick Hayashi surfaced from the scrum with a quiet smile and the ball in his hand. Michael Wranovics’s smart and hilarious debut documentary follows the fate of that ball and the two grown men who battled over it in court for almost two years. Outlining the history of famous home runs (including a brilliant montage of Bonds’s blasts) and assembling a passionate crew of Spinal Tap–esque witnesses to the infamous catch, Wranovics reveals the absurdity of it all without being preachy; he even makes it hard to decide who the bigger weasel is. Up for Grabs isn’t a film about baseball — it’s a film about greed, not so much for big bucks (though that, too) as for the new American pastime, instant fame.