BIG LEAGUE BASEBALLS

Coming Soon: 2012 Miami Marlins Inaugural Season Balls. Plus, Flordia Marlins Final Game Baseballs, and a Miami Marlins Ceremonial Opening Night Baseball Rumors?

By BLB Admin on April 4th, 2012

We’ll post a full, detailed article in the coming days, for now we just want to spread the news quickly:

So the Miami Marlins have opened the latest and greatest, retractable roof stadium with all the bells and whistles — and a newly stacked lineup to boot. Seems they were so busy showing off their new digs and building a potential NL Champ, they almost forgot to have Rawlings produce a new 2012 Inaugural Season at Marlins Park Official Game Ball.

Well it’s been approved, and thanks to the MLB Authenticator on site, we see it made it in time for the Inaugural Opening Day Game at the ballpark:

Rawlings 2012 1st Pitch Ball - Marlins Park Inaugural Season Baseball

All of the other season-long commemoratives had already been produced, shipped and sold by online shops. Even the very rare Japan Opening Series ball was stocked by USA Sports Marketing, as we discussed in our last post. We’ll get all the details on this new Miami Marlins ball, soon – it will be offered by dealers.

Glad it won’t be nearly impossible to find, like the Florida Marlins Final Game ball from 2011 (thanks again, USA Sports Marketing, for adding this!).

Flordia Marlins Final Game Ball. Photo courtesy of USA Sports Marketing

And now what, a rumor from the team that a Marlins Park Inaugural GAME ball was produced? Supposedly only available to the team and not used in the game. The photo below looks like the regular season ball, but look closely, something’s different. It’s got small logos in the bottom corners of that commemorative stamp, and the text at the bottom looks a bit different:

Is this the rumored Inaugural Game / Opening Night Ball?

Thanks to the work of Big League Baseballs forum member Stadium Page (who runs this amazing site) we can compare this ball to the picture of the Opening Night Logo he found on the scoreboard (updated with clear picture):

The Marlins Opening Night logo on the stadium scoreboard

So it looks like a different ball with the same design as on the scoreboard, featuring the Marlins and Cardinal logos at the bottom. Unfortunately, these probably aren’t available to fans. We’ll continue to research and post an update soon.