by Zack Hample
Can a team approach you with a logo idea at any point?
“On-field baseballs are set for the year prior to the start of each season, but we will work with our Clubs to accommodate requests for ceremonial first-pitch baseballs within a given season.”
Are there any rules about the logos themselves?
“You’ll notice that any special ball must have a Club mark or a silhouetted batter mark. Additionally, the third panel is always the location for the event logo.”
Is there a size restriction?
“There isn’t a specific size restriction per se, but we are always conscious of the way in which the logo shows up on the ball and whether or not that logo would make the ball more or less visible to batters.”
Does it cost extra to make commemorative balls?
“No.”
How come the World Series logo stayed the same for so many years and then started changing every season?
“We heard from our fans that they wanted the logos refreshed each year, and we obliged.”
Although commemorative balls are highly coveted among collectors, casual fans often aren’t aware that they exist. Whether or not you fit into either category, here are some photos of balls that you may never have seen:
FIRSTS
First commemorative ball ever (This one was stamped with red ink.) (Photo Credit 7.9)
First commemorative All-Star Game ball—Seattle hosted; note the tiny Mariners logo. (Photo Credit 7.10)
First commemorative ball for a regular-season series outside the United States and Canada (Photo Credit 7.11)
First All-Star ball with multicolored stitches—orange and blue for the Padres, who hosted (Photo Credit 7.12)
First game-used ball with a commemorative logo recognizing an individual player (Photo Credit 7.13)
First commemorative regular-season ball, used at Comiskey throughout the season (Photo Credit 7.14)
ANNIVERSARIES
Jackie Robinson, the first black player in the modern era, debuted on April 15, 1947. (Photo Credit 7.15)
Hank Aaron became the all-time home run leader with blast number 715 on April 8, 1974. (Photo Credit 7.16)
The American League became a major league in 1901. (Photo Credit 7.17)
The flag replaced the MLB logo to indicate that 9/11 was bigger than baseball. (Photo Credit 7.18)
The Yankees were known as the Highlanders when they moved to New York in 1903. (Photo Credit 7.19)
Many commemorative balls never see game action—like this one, made for Larsen’s perfecto. (Photo Credit 7.20)
DATES
Joe DiMaggio Day took place on September 27, 1998. (This ball has navy blue stitches.) (Photo Credit 7.21)
Exactly one year after the Yankees honored DiMaggio, Tiger Stadium saw its last game. (Photo Credit 7.22)
Simple and gorgeous. The stars are on a blue background; the stripes are red and white. (Photo Credit 7.23)
MLB has used several different Opening Day logos since 2000. This was one of them. (Photo Credit 7.24)
SkyDome’s name change warranted this, the last red-stamped ball. (Photo Credit 7.25)
Exhibition games don’t count; the new Busch Stadium opened for real on April 10, 2006. (Photo Credit 7.26)
POSTSEASON
The World Series logo switched back and forth from red to blue from 1978 to 1999. (Photo Credit 7.27)
Commissioner Bart Giamatti died before the ’89 Series, but his name was left on the balls. (Photo Credit 7.28)
From 1996 to 1999, the first two rounds of the playoffs each had their own baseballs. (Photo Credit 7.29)
The 1999 ALCS featured the last American League ball that was ever used. (Photo Credit 7.30)
World Series balls started being stamped with gold logos in 2000. (Photo Credit 7.31)
The words FALL CLASSIC first appeared on the 2009 World Series ball. (Photo Credit 7.32)
INTERNATIONAL
MLB played Spring Training games in Mexico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. (Photo Credit 7.33)
In 2003 and 2004, the Expos played a total of 44 “home” games in Puerto Rico. (Photo Credit 7.34)
American All-Stars took on Japanese All-Stars biennially from 1986 to 2006. (Photo Credit 7.35)
MLB’s first trip to China featured two Spring Training games between the Padres and Dodgers. (Photo Credit 7.36)
The WBC logo isn’t terribly exciting, but the gold stamping makes up for it. (Photo Credit 7.37)
More Asia. More Spring Training. This time the Dodgers faced a professional Chinese team. (Photo Credit 7.38)
MISCELLANEOUS
Enron Field?! This silver-stamped ball should be ashamed of itself. (Photo Credit 7.39)
Red stamping. Red and navy blue stitches. And so much ink that the hitters may have had an edge. (Photo Credit 7.40)
U2 won five awards at the ’06 Grammys; John Legend, Mariah Carey, and Kanye West each won three. (Photo Credit 7.41)
In 2006 the Phillies used these balls during BP to honor Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn. (Photo Credit 7.42)
The Home Run Derby logo changes every season. This was the one used at AT&T Park in 2007. (Photo Credit 7.43)
2K Sports, a partner of MLB, was allowed to advertise on these BP-only balls. (Photo Credit 7.44)
1 That’s why Rawlings removed the words COSTA RICA from the ball in the early 1990s; import-export rules didn’t require it.
2 The exact measurement of each layer is proprietary, but it all adds up to 330 yards’ worth of yarn and thread. The innermost layer measures roughly 220 feet. After that, there’s approximately 65 feet of three-ply tan yarn followed by 150 feet of three-ply gray yarn and 555 feet of white poly/cotton thread.
3 Speaking of numbers, it takes about five square feet of cowhide to make a dozen balls. Each sheet of hide represents half a Holstein cow—that’s the breed that gets used—and yields about 25 square feet of leather. To make a year’s worth of major league baseballs, it takes about one million square feet of cowhide (roughly 35 percent of which ends up getting scrapped) or roughly 20,000 cows.
CHAPTER 8
STORAGE, PREPARATION, AND USAGE
STRIVING FOR UNIFORMITY
Let’s go back to 1965 for a moment, to the five-game series at Comiskey Park when the Tigers accused the White Sox of using frozen baseballs. Even though this wacky incident was never settled, it served an important purpose: for the first time ever, people suggested that balls be stored under uniform temperature and humidity. It was a great idea. The only problem was that no one did anything about it.
Four years later, when Commissioner Bowie Kuhn experimented with the lively 1X ball, he considered implementing rules about how the ball should bounce and how it should be stored. “I see no reason,” he said, “why we can’t come up with accurate measurements on how a ball should behave.” Kuhn’s statement inspired several independent studies, which revealed that the amount of moisture absorbed by the wool in the core could affect the ball’s performance by 10 percent. It was known then—in the summer of 1969—that the dryer a ball becomes, the farther it travels.
Fast-forward to 1993. Major League Baseball expanded from 26 to 28 teams and awarded franchises to Florida (where it’s very humid) and Colorado (where it’s particularly dry). The Marlins finished the season dead last in home runs; everyone blamed the team’s lack of talent and its sizable stadium. Two years later the Rockies moved to Coors Field and led the National League in homers; everyone blamed the mile-high elevation and the thin air. The Rockies led the league in home runs again in 1996. And again in 1997. Scientists proved that because the air was 15 percent less dense one mile above sea level, the ball traveled 9 percent farther; what would’ve been a lazy, 370-foot fly-out in most other stadiums was a 403-foot home run at Coors Field. In 1999 baseball in Denver officially became a joke. Not only did the Rockies lead the league in long balls, but they and their opponents combined to hit 303 homers at the stadium—a single-season record for one venue. F
ree-agent pitchers were reluctant to sign with the Rockies. The team couldn’t compete. The franchise was losing money and fans. Something had to be done—but no one could think of a solution and the trend continued. In 2001 there were 268 home runs hit at Coors, the most at any ballpark that year.
Eventually, finally, thankfully, during the winter before the 2002 season, a happy coincidence involving a Rockies employee changed everything. Tony Cowell, a member of the team’s engineering department, was getting ready to go elk hunting when he discovered that his leather boots had dried up and shriveled over the summer—and it occurred to him that the same thing might’ve been happening to the cowhide covers on baseballs. The Rockies investigated his hunch and learned that some of their balls weighed as little as 4.6 ounces and measured just 8.5 inches in circumference—way below specifications. By Opening Day the team had begun to store its balls in a room-sized humidor—and it worked!
Sort of.
Coors Field remained hitter-friendly because of the thin air—curveballs still had 25 percent less bite, and hitters were still able to whip their bats through the strike zone quicker—but offense did subside.1 That’s because the balls were successfully deadened, the covers were no longer slick, pitchers regained their command, and teams stopped trying to outslug each other. Denver had real baseball at last. The Rockies could compete, and in 2007 they charged into the playoffs and reached the World Series for the first time in franchise history.
“I just don’t think it’s the home run park that it used to be,” said Rockies first baseman Todd Helton during the Series. “The ball just doesn’t jump out of there like it used to. The humidor obviously played a huge part in that.”
Measuring nine feet by nine feet, the humidor resembles a walk-in refrigerator except for the balmy conditions: 70 degrees with 50 percent humidity. Some people have referred to it as a “glorified beer cooler,” but technically it’s called an “environmental chamber.” There’s an insulated door at one end, an aisle that runs down the middle, and metal shelves from floor to ceiling on either side. These shelves can hold up to 500 dozen baseballs, which are dated and rotated so that the older ones get used first.
A peek inside the Rockies’ humidor (Photo Credit 8.1)
In February 2007 the folks at the commissioner’s office realized that teams in other cities might also be affected by humidity—so they sent out a leaguewide memo, instructing all 30 teams to start storing their baseballs under uniform conditions.
“We’re not going to have humidors everyplace,” said Joe Garagiola Jr., the senior vice president of Major League Baseball, “but every place will be temperature-controlled, and so I think there will be a very high degree of uniformity.”
Yeah, so much for that.
Three years later, in a crucial late-season game at Coors Field, Giants ace Tim Lincecum was caught on camera mouthing an expletive along with the words “juiced ball.” Never mind what may or may not have been taking place at the other 29 stadiums; rumor had it that the Rockies were secretly using two sets of game balls—one set that had been stored in the humidor and (in order to jump-start their own offense) another that hadn’t. The Giants complained to the commissioner’s office, prompting numerous denials from the Rockies.
“The integrity of the manager and coaching staff would prevent that,” said Kevin Kahn, the team’s vice president of ballpark operations.
“I don’t know a thing about it. I can’t even tell you where the hell the humidor room really is,” claimed Rockies manager Jim Tracy. “Since I was asked to manage this club nobody’s asked me to approve any baseballs, nobody’s asked me to rub any of them up, nobody’s asked me if these have been in the humidor. It’s absolutely none of my business.”
Major League Baseball responded by making it the umpires’ business. The following day, the umps were instructed to monitor the process through which the Rockies stored their balls and delivered them to the dugout. Crew chief John Hirschbeck didn’t see anything amiss—and that was the end of it.
LENA BLACKBURNE RUBBING MUD
It looks like chocolate pudding, sells for $33 a pound, and gets rubbed on every single game-used ball throughout the major and minor leagues. We’re talking about baseball’s “magic mud,” specifically a brand called Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud, which is such a big part of the sport that it was permanently enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1969. And yet despite all its fanfare, the story behind the mud is a mystery to most fans.
Brand-new baseballs, of course, aren’t fit for game use. The covers are too slick and too white, presenting not enough grip for the pitchers and too much glare for the batters. It wasn’t a problem in the old days when one ball would last an entire game, but following Ray Chapman’s death in 1920 and the subsequent effort to keep new balls in play, everyone looked for a solution. Players and umpires spent the next 18 years rubbing everything on the balls from tobacco juice (too sticky) to shoe polish (too greasy) to a combination of infield dirt and water (too scratchy). In 1938 an ump complained to Athletics third base coach Russell Aubrey “Lena” Blackburne about the condition of the balls.2 Blackburne, a former utility infielder, decided to do something about it and later discovered that the mud along a tributary of the Delaware River near his home in Palmyra, New Jersey, was the remedy. The stuff worked so well that the Athletics started using it, and by the following season he was supplying it to every team in the American League. Blackburne, having spent most of his playing days with the White Sox, was such a big fan of the American League that he refused to sell his mud to the National League until the mid-1950s. What kept him in business, other than the fact that his mud effectively removed the sheen without scuffing the horsehide or making the ball too dark, was that no one else knew where to find it or how to replicate it. The exact location where he dug it up was top secret, as were the ingredients that he added to it.
When the baseballs got too slick, Lena Blackburne took matters (and mud) into his own hands. (Photo Credit 8.2)
Blackburne died in 1968 and left the business to a boyhood friend named John Haas. Haas then passed it along to his son-in-law, Burns Bintliff, who turned it over to his own son Jim in 2001. It’s not a huge business—Jim makes less than $25,000 a year from it and works nights at a printing press to support his family—yet the secret location is still fiercely guarded. The younger Bintliff claims he was married and had two kids before he revealed it to his wife.
Bintliff used to go by boat to collect the mud. Now he takes his truck through the woods to the secret spot, and when the tide is low, he’s able to trudge out into the mucky marshland, skim off the top layer of mud with a shovel, and dump it into five-gallon buckets. Although Bintliff takes the mud from public land that’s governed by the Delaware River Basin Commission, he’s never gotten into any kind of legal trouble.
“If anybody happens to catch me in the act of harvesting mud,” he said, “I come up with a story to give them a reason I’m putting mud in a bucket. I’ve told people I use it in my garden, I use it for my rosebushes, I use it for bee stings and poison ivy and any kind of story.”
Lena Blackburne originally shipped the mud in old coffee cans; Jim Bintliff now packs it in plastic containers. (Photo Credit 8.3)
Bintliff gathers 1,000 pounds of mud every summer and pours it though a sifter in his backyard. Then he adds the secret ingredients, stores the finished product in 40-gallon trash cans over the winter, and ships two 32-ounce containers to each team the following season. That’s it. The stuff is used sparingly and lasts awhile.
According to geological studies (including one by Princeton University and another by the Army Corps of Engineers), 90 percent of the mud is made of finely ground quartz, probably pulverized by the glacier that covered New Jersey more than 10,000 years ago. As for the other 10 percent? Don’t ask. Only a handful of people know exactly what’s in it, and Bintliff has no intention of selling out the business.
“I just love being part of the sport,” he said. “I sit down t
o watch a game, and it’s nice to know that it’s my mud on those baseballs.”
EQUIPMENT MANAGERS
On May 26, 2004, Boston Herald writer Steve Buckley tracked every baseball during the Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Of the 94 balls that were used, one lasted as long as 11 pitches, 26 were gone after just one pitch, and two (which were thrown in the dirt by pitchers warming up) never even saw game action. Twenty-two balls were tossed into the crowd by players and coaches; 27 were given away by batboys and ballgirls. The final ball lasted one pitch and earned a save for Boston’s Keith Foulke, who kept the ball and later said he planned to give it away.
Using 94 balls in one game might seem excessive, especially when compared to the mere handful of balls that lasted for an entire game 100 years earlier, but nowadays it’s typical. Do you know who’s responsible for rubbing mud onto all these baseballs? Major league umpires used to handle the task until the mid-1980s, but the job now belongs to teams’ equipment managers or other clubhouse personnel.