Marc Ecko could have bought the Texas fishing license bearing Mickey Mantle’s name for only $4,000. Orlando Cepeda’s National League MVP plaque was available for only a few thousand more.

He could have even saved a half million or so and gotten home run ball No. 755 on the cheap.

Really, what would have been the fun in that?

“I thought it would be interesting for us to all have a pop culture moment together,” Ecko told the nation in announcing he was the winner of the Barry Bonds lottery for ball No. 756.

Ecko got his wish, and for that Matt Murphy is happy. He’s the 21-year-old who emerged from the scrum the night of Aug. 7 with the ball that broke perhaps the most hallowed record in sports.

While memorabilia collectors everywhere had to be cringing, baseball fans should be happy. With one swipe of his debit card, Ecko is doing what Bud Selig could never quite bring himself to do – stamp the new record as bogus in a way baseball fans will never forget.

Actually, branding the baseball is what Ecko is likely to end up doing, assuming – and that’s a big assumption – he follows through on his plan. The hip-hop fashion designer is taking votes over the next week at vote756.com on what to do with the ball he paid $752,467 for.

The other two options are giving it to the Hall of Fame intact, or sending it into outer space, though Ecko seemed unclear as to just how he would find a rocket to accomplish that.

Turns out Ecko wasn’t the only one with a plan. A California Internet entrepreneur came forward Tuesday and said he was the winning bidder for ball No. 755 and would also be placing its fate up to a vote of the American public.

Ben Padnos said he and about a dozen friends pooled their money for the $186,750 winning bid, and will give fans a chance to vote either to put it in the Hall of Fame or destroy it. Unlike Ecko, he plans to make money on the deal by selling ads on his endthedebate.com site.

Padnos said he hasn’t paid for the ball yet, and his claim of buying it could not be immediately confirmed, though he sent an e-mail to the Associated Press with the bid confirmation from SCP Auctions. He said he was surprised when he heard on Monday that he wasn’t the only one with a voting plan.

“What are the odds?” Padnos said. “I give him (Ecko) a lot of credit in all sincerity. I understood the potential value in this.”

Ecko, meanwhile, may turn out to be a shameless self-promoter looking only to feed his ego on a big stage. This is a guy, after all, who rented a Boeing 747, painted it to look like Air Force One, then taped an Internet video that made it look like someone had broken through security and spray painted graffiti on one of the plane’s engines.

It’s his money, so he can make up the rules. And while the Hall of Fame may balk at an asterisk-branded baseball, remember that all Bonds would give Cooperstown from his record-breaking night was one lousy batting helmet.

At least the Hall now has a one-in-three chance of getting an unblemished ball, a lot better odds than it had before.

Ecko is giving baseball perhaps its only chance for closure on the whole Bonds mess by getting rid of the evidence from the crime.

But is he going far enough?

Not quite.

My vote is for branding the ball with an asterisk – and then shooting it into space.