Every so often, the folks at Major League Baseball sneak one by us. We’re missing a few baseballs in the Museum of Baseballs’ photo galleries, and in our collective… collections. These are mostly baseballs from the late 1990s and early 2000s that we just weren’t on the look out for, or weren’t aware of until it was too late.
There are likely to be a few official commemorative gamers that we still don’t know about – despite being the self-proclaimed experts on this wonderful niche of the sports memorabilia world. All of that to say we almost missed another rare on-field special event / commemorative logo baseball, but not for lack of attention on our part.
Major League Baseball’s two international series this season were prime targets for commemorative game baseballs, but until recently we had not seen (cow)hide nor hair of a special logo ball for either. We even included one of these potential baseballs in our 2010 Wish List post, which we wrote and published shortly after the official commemorative game ball list was released.
“2010 MLB台灣熱身賽 @澄清湖棒球場 (MLB Taiwan Games Dodgers vs CPBL)….” Translation: 2010 MLB Taiwan warm-up game @ Chengcheng Lake Baseball Stadium.
That means there were originally no plans for these baseballs to be offered to the public, and perhaps no plans to even produce a special ball for the series. And that series is the 2010 MLB Taiwan Games. Additionally, the San Juan Series wasn’t even announced until after the 2010 MLB season was underway – but we started investigating as soon as MLB’s press releases hit sports’ reporters inboxes.
Both were prime opportunities for commemorative balls, so we were disappointed when at first it appeared there would be none. But we knew better:
Well, we learned not long after the Dodgers returned from Taiwan that there was a special game ball used in the series. And we only knew for certain because we were sent a picture from a friend of a friend who attended the games and snagged a foul ball:
Sweet! But wait, where could we find one?
None of the Rawlings dealers carried them. Nothing on eBay or Taiwan marketplaces. They weren’t sold at the event. They were nowhere.
So, if you didn’t snag a game ball from the field of play, you weren’t getting one. But for the sake of BigLeagueBaseballs, the dear members of our Forum (RIP) and for the Museum of Baseballs, we had to find a way…
Behold, the Rawlings 2010 MLB Taiwan Games Official Game Ball!
The Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Chinese Taipei All-Stars / CPBL All-Stars (Chinese Professional Baseball League: 中 華職業棒球大聯盟). We’re thrilled to add this to the collection, and it’s cool to know that despite it being a newly released item, it’s going to be one of rarest commemorative game balls made by Rawlings.
We’re fortunate to also have a few extra, which we’re offering to our dedicated site readers (for a very reasonable price, to share our good fortune). It is tough to think there might be many genuine commemorative game ball collectors who haven’t discovered our site yet, and might not get their hands on one. So we’ll offer up one or two for auction on Ebay to give others a fair shot!
So how about the second international series for 2010? This one was much more prominent, taking place during the regular season. The stats and the outcomes mattered. Also, the series was much closer to home, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. It was billed as the San Juan Series featuring the Florida Marlins and New York Mets.
We’ll get to the details later, but first, business: The Rawlings 2010 San Juan Series Official MLB Game Ball, New York Mets vs. Florida Marlins (San Juan de la serie: los Marlins de Florida contra los Mets de Nueva York.)
This time, we were informed by trusted sources that there would be an Official Rawlings Commemorative Logo Major League Baseball made for this series. We also realized this ball would be very scarce, much like the Taiwan Games baseball. It was in fact nearly impossible to find. Again, if you weren’t at the series, and didn’t catch a foul or home run ball, you were most likely out of luck.
One man we know did exactly that. He caught Mike (Giancarlo) Stanton’s second career Major League home run, in the first game of the series. That was our favorite ballhawk slash baseball author, Zack Hample. Additionally, his snags and subsequent blog posts and pictures (linked below) proved that these baseballs were used throughout the series. For plenty of other pictures and his first hand account of the catch, check out his posts from his trip to San Juan.
For the good of the site, and our mission to collect one of every official game ball, we had to find one. And we did. We ended up finding several. Once again, lucky forum members had a crack at purchasing one. Unfortunately, like the Taiwan Games’ baseballs, they’re all spoken for. Who knows if we’ll be able to find any more?
How about some facts, figures and extra tidbits from each series?
- The main difference in the 2008 China Series and Japan Series games versus the 2010 MLB Taiwan Games is that the event in Taiwan matched an MLB team against a team comprised of players from another league. Very similar to the original Japanese All-Star Series, which was last played in 2006 (please bring that back, MLB and NPB!).
- Manny Ramirez finally decided to join his club, just in time for the Taipei trip. Apparently, he had more incentives to join, you know beyond the incredible experience one has when traveling abroad and learning first hand about other cultures, lands and peoples… it was 170,000 additional incentive$ to be exact.
- It appears this goodwill tour was a hit with the locals. Check out some additional coverage here.
- The San Juan Series between the Marlins and Mets was originally set to take place in Miami as a regular home series for Florida. It was later moved to San Juan to become the only international regular season series of the 2010 MLB season.
- The San Juan Series featured six native Puerto Rican coaches and players on the Marlins and Mets rosters: coaches Edwin Rodriguez and Jose Espada of the Marlins, and players Alex Cora, Angel Pagan, Pedro Feliciano and Jesus Feliciano of the Mets.
- The San Juan Series took place at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, the same venue that hosted the Montreal Expos for 22 games each year in the 2003 and 2004 baseball seasons – where they used this cool commemorative game ball. It was also the site for several World Baseball Classic games in the 2006 and 2009 events.
- Read more about the 2010 San Juan Series and so much more about the many MLB games and events in Puerto Rico at this Society for American Baseball Research archival page.
