MiLB who?

Just when I’m resigned to a dearth of commemorative gamers in MiLB, the independent leagues come through again.

Following the recent announcement of the Atlantic League‘s home-grown ball, the Drake (see previous post), balls with red and blue laces have popped up in another MLB Partner League, the American Association.

This ball is from a Chicago Dogs game. An employee of the team stated that the AA had a shortage of its own baseballs so Rawlings repurposed balls it had already made for the Atlantic League but had not stamped yet.

Will the American Association also drop Rawlings and move to Drake/OT as have the Atlantic and Pioneer Leagues? So far reports of those balls are mixed; players seem to like the Drake but are not crazy about the Pioneer League’s OT Sports balls, even though they are presumably made by the same company (OT Sports has provided the Atl League’s uniforms since 2021).

Will the American Association adopt red and blue laces as its standard design? That would make three MLB Partner leagues using multi-colored stitches, but two using red and blue (the Frontier League had been using red-and-blue laces but is now back to red). Maybe the AA switches up the colors? Or even better for collectors, they go the Pecos League route and make a ball for each team, with laces in the team colors!

The Independent leagues are where the action is right now in terms of new and interesting ball designs.