Sen. Jim Bunning has his baseball back.

This column reported recently that the Kentucky Republican's most-valued possession from his Hall of Fame career was stolen from his Capitol Hill office over the Fourth of July recess - an autographed baseball from the 1957 All-Star Game, in which he was the American League's starting and winning pitcher.

"It's been returned - no questions asked," says the senator of the baseball, signed by 1957 All Stars Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra and Willie Mays, to name a few. U.S. Capitol Police had been investigating the heist when the baseball suddenly reappeared.

As far as the delighted Bunning is concerned, the case is closed.

"I'm not even pursuing that," he says when asked who might have swiped - and now returned - the ball.

"Some good person brought it back when they read about it and what it meant to me," he says. "I don't care about its value (estimated at about $10,000) to a collector. It's a keepsake that has more sentimental value to me than anybody else in the world. It's never going out of my family."

Asked if the baseball would be displayed again in his office, Bunning replies "No."

"It is in a much more secure place," he says.

Bunning spent 17 record-setting years as a Major League Baseball pitcher. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame after becoming the second pitcher in history - Cy Young was the first - to record 1,000 strikeouts and 100 wins in both the National and American Leagues.

MY DOG ATE IT

Usually every day that Congress is in session, one or more lawmakers step up to the microphone and give a "personal explanation" as to why they were absent for a roll-call vote.

Others will approach the lectern and request that their vote be changed, explaining that they mistakenly voted "aye" when they'd intended to vote "nay."

Take Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.), who wanted it made perfectly clear that he was not responsible for missing an important roll-call vote last week: "Mister Chairman, I was unavoidably detained due to a U.S. Airways plane malfunction," he said.

After Moore was finished offering his excuse, Rep. Sue Myrick (R-S.C.) stood up to explain, in no uncertain terms, why she had cast the wrong vote in the same roll call.

"Mister Speaker, due to exhaustion, I mistakenly voted on roll call vote 445. I should have voted 'nay,'" she said.

The tired Myrick and other physically and emotionally drained members of the House departed Washington hours later for their summer recess.

RED-MEAT AGENDA

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore's left-wing politics can be annoying, author Kay Hymowitz says.

For instance, while Moore used this year's Academy Award ceremonies to claim that President Bush was a "fictitious president," the director himself was accused of distorting the facts in his Oscar-winning film, "Bowling for Columbine."

Still, Hymowitz writes, Moore can at times be very funny - and accurate.

"In May, I went to see Moore give a talk to graduating seniors at a liberal arts college outside New York City, and it was easy to see why the kids went nuts," she writes in City Journal, a quarterly publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute.

Moore was "funny, confident, passionate, idealistic, full of possibility." Continued...