A celebration and a lament
I hope everyone is enjoying what’s left of the 2024 baseball season! The minor league seasons are in the books (unless you count the Arizona Fall League). The MLB post-season is underway and has already provided some great moments and some heartbreaking ones, with more of each to come. Baseball is a beautiful game.
Many poignant and poetic things have been written about this wonderful game, and they’re all true. One of my favorite quotes about the game is one I can’t remember in its entirety, nor who said it, so I have to paraphrase: Baseball is greater than the idiots who run it. If I recall, this was said during one of the game’s labor disputes and the speaker was referring to both the owners and the players. It’s still true and it always will be.
Regular visitors to this site are well aware of my opinion of the current Commissioner and what has been done to MiLB, so I won’t rehash any diatribes here. I mention this only because I just added a great piece to the Museum and it reminded me of what used to be.
Today I picked up a 1999 Double-A All-Star Game ball in mint condition.
As I was posting it to the Museum I was struck again by the loss of minor league commemorative gamers. Starting in 1983 and running through the 2020 cancelled season, MiLB leagues and teams commissioned some beautiful designs for All-Star Games, post-season games, team anniversaries and inaugural games, even some devoted to stadiums opening or closing. During the 1990s many featured multi-colored ink and stitches. It was a boom era for collectors.
I fondly recall putting together a list every year of which teams were hosting their league’s events and contacting them early to make sure I snagged a ball. While there were some that were reserved for attendees of the game, most teams were happy to sell them to the public. It was a busy time and a ritual I looked forward to every season.
As of 2021 MiLB ceased commissioning commemorative game balls, thanks mostly to the fact that a certain MLB Commissioner effectively demolished and rebuilt the MiLB organization as a wholly-owned subsidiary. Again, I’m not gonna get myself started on that (it’s not like I’ve avoided taking a couple of shots already), I just wanted to remind my fellow collectors that if you haven’t stopped by the All-Star Games and Special Events section of the Museum in a while, you should revisit it. Quite a few new pieces have been added this year, and all of the older pics have been updated over the past few months. It’s a great reminder of a glorious era of minor league collecting that we may never see again.
Please enjoy the rest of the 2024 MLB season, and please remain a fan of minor league ball. Keep checking back here for updates, new stuff is added frequently. And please join me in continuing to thank our lucky stars that no matter the level of play, baseball is greater than the idiots who run it.
-Tony Baseballs
EDIT: Not long after posting this I found the exact quote and it turns out I misremembered almost everything about it. It’s from HoFer Bill Terry and it wasn’t said during a labor dispute since he didn’t live long enough to see one. The actual quote is, “Baseball must be a great game to survive the fools who run it.”