BIG LEAGUE BASEBALLS

Rawlings 2010 MLB Taiwan Games and San Juan Series Commemorative Game Baseballs

By BLB Admin on July 20th, 2010

Every so often, the folks at Major League Baseball sneak one by us. We’re missing five or six baseballs in the Museum of Baseballs’ photo galleries, and in our collective… collections. If that makes sense. 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 quite possibly 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.

Well, it almost happened again this year, but not for lack of attention on our part. Major League Baseball’s two international “series” were prime targets for commemorative game baseballs, but until recently we had not seen (cow)-hide nor hair of  a special event ball for either. We even included one of these potential baseballs in our 2010 Wish List post, which came out after the official commemorative game ball list was released.

That means there were originally no plans for it to be released to the public, and perhaps no plans to even produce ballfor the series. And that series is the 2010 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 we got word.

Both were obvious opportunities for commemorative balls, so we were disappointed when at first it appeared there would be none. 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 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 dealers carried them. Apparently, 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.com, the dear members of our Forum and for the Museum of Baseballs, we had to find a way…

Behold, the 2010 Taiwan Games Official Game Ball!

Rawlings 2010 Taiwan Games Official Major League Baseball, used by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chinese Professional Baseball League all-stars.

• Rawlings 2010 Taiwan Series Game Ball, Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Chinese Professional Baseball League – CPBL (中 華職業棒球大聯盟)

We’re thrilled to add it to the collection, and it’s great to know that despite it being so new, it is going to be one of rarer commemorative game balls made by Rawlings. We’re fortunate to also have a few extra, which offered some to our dedicated forum members. It is tough to think there might be many genuine commemorative game ball collectors who haven’t discovered BigLeagueBaseballs.com yet, and therefor might not get their hands on one. So I think we’ll offer up one or two on Ebay to give other a fair shot!

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So how about the second international series for 2010? This one was much more prominent, taking place during the regular season – meaning the stats and the outcomes mattered. Also, the series was much closer to home, in San Juan, the capital of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. It was billed as the San Juan Series, and pitted the Florida Marlins against the New York Mets.

We’ll get to the details later, but first, business:

Rawlings 2010 San Juan Series Official Major League Baseball, used by the Florida Marlins and New York Mets June 28-30.

• Rawlings 2010 San Juan Series Official 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 Commemorative 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 Stanton’s 2nd career Major League home run, in the first game of the series – our favorite ballhawk slash baseball author Zack Hample. And he also accomplished another important thing – his snag below and subsequent blog post with pictures proves that these baseballs were used throughout the series – no switching back to the regular game ball in the later innings as has been rumored with a few other commemorative gamers.

Zack Hample's baseballs from the first game of the San Juan Series in Puerto Rico. Batting practice baseballs pictured on top, with two gamers on bottom.

For plenty of other pictures and his first hand account of the catch, check out his blog 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. We ended up finding several. Once again, lucky forum members had a crack at purchasing one. Unfortunately, like the Taiwan baseballs, they’re all spoken for. Who knows if we’ll be able to find any more.

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So how about some details from each series?

• The Taiwan games are intriguing. Instead of plagiarizing, check out the article below. In summary, it discusses how the Taiwanese government, along with local baseball officials, urged the Dodgers to make the goodwill trip. Why the urgency?

Taiwanese professional baseball has been rocked by a game-fixing scandal that resulted in the February indictments of 24 people, including nine players from the four-team league. (From: Dodgers, MLB, try to repair baseball in Taiwan, by Steve Henson.)

• The main difference in the 2008 China Series and Japan Series games versus the 2010 Taiwan series is that the event in Taiwan pitted an MLB team against a team outside of the Majors, one that is comprised of players from another league. Very similar to the original Japanese All-Star Series, which was last played in 2006.

• Manny Ramirez finally decided to join his club for the trip. Apparently, he had more incentive than the incredible experience one has when traveling abroad and learning first hand about other cultures and lands: 170,000 additional incentives to be exact.

• It appears the 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. It was also the site for several World Baseball Classic games in the 2006 and 2009 events.

• Read more about the San Juan Series here and here.