Someones lying...
 

Check out this lot on Ebay..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/THE-500TH-HO...item5649a08ba2


And then this lot from Mastro's Auction in 2001...

http://www.legendaryauctions.com/Lot...entoryid=13825

I'd guess the ebay listing is the wrong one.

In case you can't see the Mastro's site...

I sent the seller an email with the Mastro's listing. Waiting to hear back.

Hmmm...Is it just me, or does the Mastro ball look like it's not game used? I don't see any signs that the ball had been rubbed down with mud prior to the game. The ball looks basically stark white with some toning present.

I'd like to have the opportunity to look at this ball in person, FWIW...

I want to see the photo that mastro says has the ball and bat in the same pic.

i didnt know a baseball could have a hematoma.

Hematoma = toning in Mastrospeak :rolleyes:

The ball on eBay is likely the fake. It doesn't seem to have any manufacturers stamping, and looks very used for most likely being pitched maybe once or twice before being hit over the fence.

On the other ball, it does look pretty pristine, but that goes back to the above...The ball may have only been pitched once or twice before being hit out of the park. The 3-dot Feeney is also consistent with 1978.

Thats kinda how I'm leaning Brandon. Sometimes game used balls don't look rubbed up in a picture. But the Ebay one looks too rubbed up LOL

well for Babe Ruth's 600th HR there were two balls

That was my 1st thought... Can this be one of those times... when, for some freak reason, there are 2 balls? Then I thought, Nahhh

I never heard that before, can some give a link to it. Thanks

Scott, maybe all MLB teams do this now, but the Mariners take many balls out of play immediately, tag them for their significance (e.g-Ichiro foul ball in 5th inning), then sell them at a stand in the vending area. The balls do NOT look rubbed down. First time I saw the pile of white balls, I was kind of stunned - real foul balls always looked super-nasty, so it made me wonder what they rub them with now.

Ruth asked the clubhouse man to go out and find the ball he hit for no 600. The guy came back with a kid and the kid gave Ruth the ball he had caught. Ruth gave the kid an autographed ball.

5 minutes latter another kid came into the clubhouse with a ball saying the same as the first kid.

Ruth did the same as the first.

Gehrig BTW hit one in his at bat after Ruth.

you can find the story in the Sporting News Archieves

This was maybe 10 years ago but my dad caught a Ken Griffey Jr. foul ball at old Yankee stadium. The ball was filthy. Have they changed the way they prep balls for games now? Seems unlikely they would be WHITE. This ball my dad caught looked like it had come out of the beast from The Sandlot's mouth.

They still rub them the same way...same stuff! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-elLn...eature=related

Zack Hample's book "The Baseball" has a good write-up of an interview he did with one of the clubhouse personnel who was responsible for rubbing up balls before the game (don't have the book with me, and can't recall which team). The gist of it is that, although the same mud is used consistently, there can be inconsistencies depending on who is rubbing up the ball and which balls are selected for game use. When the ball was pulled (or hit) from play can also have an effect on how "dirty" it appears, and for sure balls nowadays are pulled much more quickly than in Ruth's day.

I'm not sure if these factors would account for one ball being "filthy" and another "near pristine", but you would expect at least some range of "dirtiness" rather than a consistent level of "dingy" in the overall scheme of things.

Here's some game used baseballs from Angel stadium. These are either foul balls or balls in the dirt replaced between pitches. They are consistently rubbed with Lena Blackburn Rubbing Mud.

Yeah they all use the same mud (comes from a tributary of the Delaware River not far from me) but each team has a guy that rubs them up. I think there can be a huge difference from team to team. Even ones that look white, when held under light you can see a sheen on them.

I'll ask my dad to send me a photo of his Griffey foul ball. Like I said it's pretty filthy. I didn't know some of them could look so new.

Here is a collection of foul balls from Cleveland Municipal Stadium in the 1960s.

Greg