Diamonds may not be your best friend after all

America At Large:  Two days ago the boxer James Toney appeared at a Madison Square Garden press conference to announce his upcoming challenge to World Boxing Association heavyweight champion John Ruiz.

Midway through lunch an observant photographer stopped by our table and asked Toney to raise his fists.

He did so, blinding onlookers with the flash of what must have been half a million dollars' worth of bling: diamond bracelets on both wrists, and at least half a dozen rings displayed on various fingers.

"My God," joked the man seated next to Toney. "It's Mercury Morris' Super Bowl ring!" Spend much time around the locker-room of just about any professional sport you can name and you're bound to hear the phrase: "It's all about the ring."

We haven't yet seen the design for the New England Patriots' World Championship rings, but we know this much: since its win in Super Bowl XXXIX last month, the team's third in four years, the latest will be, at $23,000, more costly, and even more ostentatious, than its predecessors.

Here's a brief description of the rings the Patriots received for winning their first Super Bowl in 2002: 14-karat white gold, featuring 142 diamonds. Forty-two diamonds encircle the bezel, with two larger, football-shaped diamonds on each side. The face is the Patriots' Flying Elvis logo made from red garnets and blue sapphires trimmed with diamonds. A platinum miniature of the Vince Lombardi Trophy behind the logo is festooned with a large marquis diamond and two tapered baguette diamonds.

Now, obviously, you wouldn't want to walk out in public wearing bling like that unless you were accompanied by a pair of armed bodyguards. Tom Brady says he wore his once and then gave it to his father for safekeeping.

The thing is the approximate size of a hand grenade, and might be a bit heavier. If you planned on wearing it for very long you'd probably need another minder just to prop your arm up. Just as today's boxing championship belts wouldn't do for holding one's trousers up, these rings are for admiring, not flashing on one's fingers.

Super Bowl rings of yesteryear were, by comparison, modest. The ones the Miami Dolphins received following their 1972 season, for instance, were made of "10-karat yellow gold, with a full-carat diamond set in an aquamarine stone, with 16 smaller diamonds circling the center."

We know this because the information is on the police report filed by Eugene (Mercury) Morris after somebody lifted his Super Bowl VII ring from the men's room of a Miami hotel washroom last week. Actually, the latest Morris ring to disappear was a replica, struck after the original was stolen in 1978, and the first question that popped into my cynical mind was "Yeah? And was it insured?"

"I'm holding out hope that somebody will give it up," said Morris to the Miami Herald after the latest ring was pilfered. "It means a great deal to me."

Morris' NFL career was brilliant but brief, and a few years after his retirement he spent three years in prison on drug trafficking charges. He is by most accounts thoroughly rehabilitated and spends much of his time as a motivational speaker lecturing on the very evils which curtailed his career.

According to the Herald, Morris was at the Biscayne Bay Marriott speaking at a seminar on how football concussions can lead to forgetfulness years later when he went to the men's room, took off the ring to wash his hands. By the time he remembered and went back to retrieve it, it had disappeared. Years ago when an object of such value went missing, the constabulary routinely staked out area pawnshops. Today, the first place they look is Ebay.

Believe it or not, at least a few sports memorabilia thieves have been stupid enough to post their stolen wares online.

Heisting championship rings has become a big business, but for every one that turns up for sale to collectors, half a dozen more are never seen again. The two teenage boys who stole four NCAA championship rings from University of Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma got caught because they walked around wearing the rings for several days before unloading them - for $150 apiece.

A decade ago two American League Championship commemorative rings belonging to the late Red Sox star Ted Williams, and valued at $90,000, became the centrepiece of a federal case involving Williams' son, John Henry, and several sports memorabilia dealers, and resulted in the conviction (for "interstate transportation of stolen property") of a former Maine state trooper.

Two decades ago, Williams' most prominent rival, Joe DiMaggio, lost nine World Series rings in a hotel burglary.

A few years ago, Rocky Bleier, the old Steelers running back, had a pair of Super Bowl rings stolen from the luggage he had left backstage during a speaking engagement in Charlotte, North Carolina. And at least a few of the hot rings are probably dismembered.

Since wearing a stolen Super Bowl ring would be unhealthy and selling one on the open market unwise, you have to wonder: where do these things end up? In the trophy cases of private collectors, most likely.

We didn't have commemorative rings in my era, at least not at the level at which I played, but I do remember a high school locker-room burglary which took place while most of us were in the shower. Some of our practice equipment went missing, and the circumstances pointed to it having been an inside job. Our coach was most disturbed by the implicit lack of trust likely to spread among team-mates, but I distinctly recall his baffled tone as he addressed the troops.

"Who," he asked, "would want to wear somebody else's jockstrap?" And who would want to wear somebody else's Super Bowl ring? "Just because somebody steals something and wears it around," Geno Auriemma groused after his rings were stolen, "doesn't make them good at anything." Except, perhaps, stealing rings.