The Major League Baseball season kicked off with an opening series in Tokyo between the LA Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. Those games introduced our first MLB commemorative game ball of the year, the Rawlings MLB World Tour – Tokyo Series 2025 baseball. We have official product images direct from Rawlings Sporting Goods along with the real baseball image:
And for proof of game-use, here’s the 2025 Tokyo Series Game 1, 1st pitch baseball:
That’s the ball Chicago Cubs ace Shota Imanaga pitched to LA Dodgers legend Shohei Ohtani in the top of the first inning. The first pitch of the 2025 Major League Baseball season! And it’s available via MLB Auction right now at the time we published this post (March 26th 2025 at 15:20 Japan Standard Time (JST).
Say whatever you want about the logo. It’s the current trend in MLB to go bland and basic with wordmarks—especially with these World Tour designs. They’re just replaceable text templates. Take a teeny MLB batterman and swap in new text with absolutely zero branding or creativity. No element of the event host’s local culture, landmarks, or topography (how about a Mount Fuji?!) not even a simple 東京. No personality whatsoever. Is that essentially the basis of the modern MLB brand?!
It’s this continued corporate overreach we’ve been whining about for years now, and I don’t see it changing under the current front office. But fine, that’s the brand for MLB World Tours. At least we’ll have City Connects and other events with more room for character and proper commemorative game ball logos, right? And as long as that MLB “bland brand” doesn’t bleed into our most sacred events and specialty game balls—the Midsummer Classic—like it did in 2019, we’ll survive and keep collecting.
Say… you don’t suppose they’re gonna’ ruin our sacred MLB All-Star Game logos and baseballs again, do you? 👀
Okay how about a cool, ‘classic’ logo to lift our spirits:
Turns out those Tokyo Series commemorative baseballs were not the first special gamers to make the starting lineup this season. At least they’re not the first 2025 pro game ball that’s affiliated with MLB. There is a World Baseball Classic coming in 2026 (barring any global disasters). A preliminary play-in tournament took place for teams vying for the final spots in the main event next year.
The 2025 World Baseball Classic Qualifier, which took place over two separate rounds in Taipei, Taiwan and Tucson, Arizona, also featured specially stamped, cowhide-covered official game balls. These have not been sold in any retail capacity, at least not that we’ve seen, and they are not currently being offered to Rawlings dealers or retail outlets. So you either had to snag a WBCQ BP/practice ball or game-used specimen from the field of play. Or you might get very lucky and track down mint unused specimens that leak out to the public, which we did:
Here’s the full front panel view. We always want to show Rawlings some love and share their logo stamp more often, but… where’d it go?!
Does anyone else find it annoying that there’s so much space between the Rawlings logo and the top seam, and likewise with the commemorative event logo and the lower seam? Am I too critical? Just nitpicking, but I love when I can fit all the ink stamping in one shot, at least for standard league balls.
Compare some of the AMAZINGLY STAMPED baseballs from the past to Rawlings MLB event commemorative baseballs today. I want my logos to be bold, crisp, perfectly centered, and as close to the seams as possible!
Some stats about the World Baseball Classic and WBC baseballs:
- There have been 5 World Baseball Classics, 2026 will be the 6th iteration of the global tournament.
- There have been been at least 11 WBC and Qualifier balls if you count the purported canceled and prototype Qualifiers and the 2006 WBC prototype we’ve discovered.
- So technically there are only 5 WBC official game balls (2006, 2009, 2013, 2017, 2023) and 3 official WBCQ Qualifiers (2012, 2016, 2025) used in sanctioned tournament games.
- The 2013 tournament was the first to include a qualifying round (in 2012) which determined the final 4 teams to make the Classic.
- The top 12 teams from the 2009 Classic automatically qualified for 2013.
- The 2020 World Baseball Classic was scheduled to be the 5th Classic, and its preliminary play-in Qualifier was originally scheduled for March 2020. The entire event was canceled (COVID-19). If you see a specially stamped 2020 ball, we suggest you snag it.
- There are some 2020 qualifier baseballs floating around out there, some may have made it into individual team practices. Check our International Tournaments gallery for an example.
- The 2026 World Baseball Classic will be contested by 20 teams. Games will be played from March 5th to 17th in 4 cities in 3 countries: Houston, Texas and Miami, Florida, USA; Tokyo, Japan; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
More 2025 Rawlings MLB baseballs are coming soon! You can check out our 2025 MLB season primer here, which is more of a “wish list,” but it does unveil some for-certain events that will feature specially stamped ROMLB commemorative balls to be used in game play. We also speculate on special events that will most likely feature special baseballs, and we pitch random commemorative baseball ideas which are highly unlikely to be considered.
Contact us or post a comment if you have any other images or ideas to add! And let us know if you found the error / design mistake in one of the baseball images in this post. It’s tiny, but it’s a definite oopsie!
I noticed you said Astros are using their balls on Saturdays, but they wear city connect unis on Mondays. Are they not using the baseballs on city connect days? I planned on going 5/12/2025, but don’t want to waste a trip. Thanks!
Good catch they should only use them on days when they wear the uniforms which will mostly be Monday home games. I’ve seen game-used Astros City Connect baseballs from the games on March 31, and April 11-13, but the rest have only been from Monday games.