SAN FRANCISCO - A judge yesterday ruled that Barry Bonds' record-setting 73rd home run ball belongs to both fans who battled for the hunk of sports history in the stands of a delirious Pacific Bell Park last year. And neither is happy about it.

Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy ordered that the scuffed-up ball, with an estimated value of $1 million, be put up for auction and the profits split between Berkeley, Calif., restaurant owner Alex Popov, who first touched the ball as it flew into the right-field seats, and Sacramento marketer Patrick Hayashi, who recovered it after a fierce rumble.

The judge emphasized that Popov's attempts to hold onto the coveted baseball were "interrupted by the collective assault of a band of wrongdoers" who descended on him, making it impossible to determine whether he actually had legal possession of his prize.

Lawyers on both sides said they would study the judge's complex, 12-page ruling before deciding whether to appeal. But nobody wasted time putting their own spin on McCarthy's decision.

"All I know is that I had possession of that ball," Hayashi said. "Now, I'm going to have to go back and evaluate what the legal definition of possession is."

He said the judge's ruling proved he did not attack Popov in the scramble and he insisted on an apology.

Nothing doing, countered Popov outside the courtroom, suggesting that he still held Hayashi partially responsible for yanking the baseball from his glove during the much-publicized scrum. "He owes me an apology."

Contradicting his attorney, Martin Triano, who called the ruling "a victory for all fans," a disgruntled Popov insisted that the judge's decision gives outright support to mob violence.

All he ever wanted, Popov said, was to keep the baseball he caught, a dream now very much in doubt. "It's a piece of baseball history, a piece of San Francisco history and a piece of legal history," he said. "The way I see it is that anything short of full possession gives power to mob mentality and allows people to profit from aggression."

Popov, 38, claims he legally caught the ball and lost it only after being attacked by fans. Hayashi insists he picked up the ball after it rolled out of the press of bodies and that it belongs to him. After the two sides failed to reach an out-of-court settlement over the ball, which sits in an Alameda County, Calif., bank safety deposit box, McCarthy set the matter for trial.

Central to the case, the judge said, was who had possession of the ball and when and how they could prove it. But despite 17 eyewitnesses and video footage showing Popov catching the ball and holding it for 0.6 of a second before being descended on by fellow fans, McCarthy said crucial evidence was nonetheless missing.

McCarthy, a baseball neophyte who says he has never been to Pacific Bell Park, nonetheless sounded like a play-by-play announcer as he read his verdict of the events of Oct. 7, 2001.

"Barry Bonds came to bat in the first inning. With nobody on base and a full count, Bonds swung at a slow knuckleball," he read to a courtroom packed with reporters and supporters from each litigant. "He connected. The ball sailed over the right-field fence and into the arcade."

John M. Glionna and Maura Dolan are reporters for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.