Hi Certainteed52,
Welcome to net54!
As many on net54 know, I have been an advanced collector of Nolan Ryan since 1972.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Durwood Merrill sold many balls surrounding the months prior to his death that several people in the hobby, including myself, question as being authentic.
The inaccurate date in the inscription on the ball is one issue, which as Doug Goodman mentioned, probably was simply a matter of Merrill forgetting to write the correct date.
More important is the fact that Durwood Merrill did not work in the umpire crew during Nolan Ryan's 300th win game on July 31, 1990.
FYI, the umpire crew that night were Al Clark (who went to prison for selling fake balls to this game, Roger Clemens' 20 K game in 1986 and Cal Ripken's 2131 game), John Hirschbeck, Rocky Roe and Dave Philllips.
I recall an auction that Mike Gutierrez had during the time prior to Merrill's death in 2003 that featured many balls that Merrill claimed were game used balls related to many historic baseball games including stating that some were home run balls. I wondered how an umpire could come to own homerun balls from a game? To Mike G.'s credit, he was forthcoming and did provide Durwood Merrill's home phone number in TX to me and former baseball hobbiest and current composer/author Seth Swirsky. Merrill was affable and claimed that all of these balls were
"gifted" to him while he was an AL umpire.
If you take everyone's word at face value, that's fine, but as an excellent rule of thumb, common sense and caution should be used when considering authenticity and provenance.... Just sayin'
