Recently there was a flourish at the close of the baseball season regarding who would set a new record for home runs. As the record was tied, and then broken, somebody in the stands claimed to “have the ball”. They were probably looking for a huge payout by selling the ball at auction. BUT, how can it be determined they have THE BALL.
When a batter is at the plate with the potential for a record home run, do they bring in a marked ball. Some way to confirm this was the genuine article when a fan raises his arm in glee, and displays the find and later produces it for capital gain. Some way to prevent two or more folks claiming later that they have the actual item.
I recall there was a marking detectable with UV light on the Bonds homerun balls.
Unless you are going to add asterisks to the name of everyone who played in the steriod era, the amphetamine era, the segregation era, the dead ball era, the pre-modern era, the war years, CUT IT OUT!
yes, they use special balls any time a big record can be broken. If you watch the game you will see the umpire call for the special balls when the guy comes up to bat.
I too would like to see something definitive on ball marking. When the McGuire-Sosa race was on I thought I’d heard that some kind of readable chip was placed in the ball. But last year at a Rangers-Mariners game I asked an umpire (our seat were next to their entrance tunnel) and he said definately not.
Maybe he was referring to the specific device and not the practice itself.
I’m almost positive there are some kind of markings. Dunno what type, but seems like I remember some litigation about the ownership of one of the Bonds*** balls, and I think they were able to authenticate the ball as being genuine.
I would have thought that an Authioritative Book* such as the Book* of Oak would be more consistent with its use of asterisks with each name occurance.