TUCSON, Ariz. -- So why did Curt Mueller pay $10,000 for a piece of chewed bubble gum?

Mueller, owner of a sports medicine company and winner of an auction for a wad of gum chewed by Luis Gonzalez of the Arizona Diamondbacks, had two goals in mind.

He wanted publicity to sell his own competing gum. And he wanted to donate the cash to a high school for scholarships.

When Mueller talked to Gonzalez on Tuesday, he added a third reason. He wanted to help the outfielder with his hitting by having him switch brands of gum.

"I'm doing pretty well with the cheap stuff," Gonzalez said with a laugh in a three-way conversation with Muller and disc jockey Johnjay Van Es of Tucson radio station KRQ.

Gonzalez, 32, won last year's All-Star home run derby, had 57 homers and 142 RBI and delivered the winning hit in Game 7 to clinch the World Series for the Diamondbacks.

On Monday night, Gonzalez had two hits and four runs batted in against the St. Louis Cardinals to improve to .259 for the season, with three home runs and nine RBI.

Before talking on-air with Mueller, Gonzo told Van Es that everywhere he goes now, "people ask me if I've got bubble gum."

He said he wanted to know what Mueller was thinking in making such a large bid.

"Damnedest thing I've ever seen," Mueller said Tuesday from his office in Prairie du Sac, Wis. "I can't take all the calls" coming in about his winning bid.

He said he decided to get into the used gum acquisition business while reading a newspaper in Jamaica last week "about this guy chewing some gum and throwing it away."

Mueller learned that Jason Gabbert, owner of a sports memorabilia store in Wood Lake, Minn., and Van Es were jointly auctioning Gonzalez's chewed gum.

Gabbert said he got the gum through a security guard during a March 7 spring training game in Tucson after Gonzalez had tossed it in the dirt, and decided to auction it off with the proceeds to go to a nearby high school -- Lakeview in Cottonwood, Minn.

When the gum's authenticity was questioned, Gonzo agreed to gnaw another piece of gum in front of television cameras, seal it in a plastic bottle and have it delivered to Van Es.

Mueller's check to Lakeview High School was sent to KRQ on Tuesday to be forwarded to the school, with the gum -- and Gonzo's original wad as well -- to be sent to Mueller.

"Those are going to be in my office in a glass case," he said.

Mueller said he was pleased to make a donation to a high school for student scholarships that also would be a contribution to a customer. Lakeview uses his company's medical supplies, he said.

Principal David Fjeldheim said officials at the 183-student southwestern Minnesota school at first were concerned about the auction's legitimacy.

But with those fears allayed, they're likely to create an endowment fund providing two scholarships annually.

"We will probably end up looking at the qualities that Luis Gonzalez portrays so well -- very nice guy, trustworthy and honest, excellent attitude on the courts and the field," Fjeldheim said.

One would be awarded in Gonzalez's name and the other in Mueller's, he said.

Mueller said he would have gone up to $50,000.

"I thought, like, I had some cash in my pocket and I knew what to do with it," he said.

For years, his company has given money to the NFL Trainers Association for scholarships for children, he said. "This is just another way of doing it."