Mid-Season Blacklight Examination

At this point in the season, I've finally reached my first long break. I was chugging along for three solid weeks, so it was time to relax, reflect, and start working at RBF a little to pay for all of this. I didn't actually want to stop, but the Brewers, Sox, and Cubs were all on the road. As good a time as any, right? I took it as a sign from the baseball Gods telling me to catch my breath.

The single most interesting thing I've learned since I started Ballhawking was the Rawlings method. I wrote an entry about it during the off-season, and went through the entire (very secretive) process. However, the coolest part of discovering that process was finding out that each ball is stamped with invisible ink as a quality control mechanism. When you put a ball under a regular old black light, the numbers magically appear.

Some of my balls from last year that had superb stamps.

Now, not every ball has visible markings. Rawlings wipes each ball off with a cleaning agent before moving them farther down the production line. That step probably rids more than half the balls of their numbers. Other balls are rubbed up for a game, and the chalkiness of the mud hides them. A few more are simply beat to hell so bad in batting practice that they just disappear. But as you can see, there are a decent amount of balls that still present the code.

I've been so busy this season that I haven't looked at almost all of my baseballs under the light, even for myself on my own time. I recall glancing at a few from very early in the season, but I have no recollection of what was (or wasn't) on them. The following pictures are pretty much the first time I had a good look at all of them.

Here are most of the balls I've caught in 2013, excluding the two Glove Tricks (46 and 47) I gave away in Cincinnati:

Here's the same shot, after turning off the lights and flipping on my lamp with the black light in it:

You may be able to see some faint markings from that picture, but I want to give you the best view possible. After searching each one, I placed the balls like this:

Why? Because that yielded the best view of the markings:

You can see right away that 14 of the 25 had actual invisible ink. Anything on the other balls is other residue that gets on there somehow. The camera doesn't do a good job of catching it, but grass stains turn a weird neon green. There also a bunch of other things like spit, pine tar, and bat marks that make noticeable blemishes other than the stamped numbers.

So now you've seen a few pictures of the blue effect the black light displays; that's all for show. Since I wasn't getting exactly what I wanted in the shots I took, I tried something else that I've noticed but never tried on a camera:

Black and white only! It looks pretty cool, and showed the details more clearly. Time for close ups!

Starting at the top left corner:

Personally, I feel this is the best corner in terms of visible stamps. Number 33, all the way at the top, was used in the exhibition game in Milwaukee. It was rubbed up and everything, just like it would be in a real game. Even though you can't really read the numbers or letters (due to the logo being stamped in the same spot), it still made it through the cleaning and game use.

Number 40 (middle row on the right) was rubbed up, but thrown to me from the bullpen at the Cell. I can't say about game use on that one. (I'm only pointing the rubbed ones out because I suspect that's what hides otherwise visible stamps more than any other abuse).

The other seven were all batting practice. The two on the ends in the bottom row didn't have huge markings, but I could see some weird colors up close when I rolled them between my fingers. That's just something you're only able to see in person, though.

Since this is the best corner, here's the color shot I took:

Here's upper right corner:

Nothing too special. The two from the right in the third row were from Detroit, and beat to hell. The MLB logo even wore off of them. However, you can see that traces still remained on number 48.

Now the bottom left corner:

Nothing too legible, but still the second best corner as far as straight results go. You can obviously see number 56 is rubbed, and had nothing to see.

Number 55 is pretty interesting, though. It gives the best example of the 'secondary markings' I was talking about. In regular light, it looks nearly pristine and fresh out of the box. Here's another color photo to show the real thing:

Still not extremely clear, but it's sort of visible. That may have been as simple as the BP pitcher licking his fingers right before lobbing this one up to the plate. Unfortunately, that's the only one of that kind you'll be able to see. These balls are almost more interesting to me. Sure, the numbers are a code, but I want to see what popped up on the ball due to how it was used at the ballpark.

And finally, the lower right:

Second from the left in the middle row is rubbed; got it from the usher at the Cell after the second worst Ballhawking game of my life.

That makes all of them! I won't be able to keep up the same pace of games for the rest of the season. I've adjusted my season ending goal to 64 balls. I more than doubled my collection to 32 in 2012, so I'm hoping to double it again in 2013. It's amazing how much I've improved in three years, going from nothing to 32 balls in a single season. And I still plan on getting even better for 2014.