The "You Won't Believe This Story!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading a story that told how professional baseball prepares their baseballs for a game.  They don't just open a box and hand half-a-dozen to the umpire.  Now...I have played and coached  midget-midget league, junior-midget league, midget league and Legion League baseball for years and years.  I have been lucky enough to have won many tournaments as well as league championships over the 50 plus years I coached and played.  One of the last things I ever took notice to while coaching was the consistency of the baseballs that we used to play the game of baseball.  Hey...it's a little round white ball with red stitches and usually something stamped on the side of the baseball telling who made the balls we were using.  Well, if you are a baseball fanatic and love professional baseball, you know that how baseballs are made is more than just something simple.  There are standardized procedures that need to be followed when making baseballs for professional baseball.  And...it seems that some of the teams and players aren't happy with the baseballs this year.   Major League Baseball has been working on standards over the course of this current season in response to feedback from players.  As of Tuesday, July 5, 2022, there is an update to baseball storage and handling of major league baseballs.  Goes like this..."A minimum 13 dozen baseballs are readied for each game.  Use of a humidor is necessary for all 30 teams.  Major League Baseball is mandating a ball be stored in a humidor for at least 14 days before game use, and ball storage must be recorded by the home team's game day compliance monitor and then certified in a signed form by the clubhouse manager.  All baseballs projected to be used must be mudded within three hours of all other baseballs being used in that game, and must be mudded on the same day that they are going to be used."  Got that?  You can no longer take out a half dozen balls from the trunk of your car and tell the team to rub a bit of dirt on each one to make it look like it has been used in the past.  And, if you're not sure what mudding might be, it is the process of removing gloss from new baseballs to give pitchers a better grip.  OK...there is more...Baseballs should not be out of the humidor for more than two hours at any point prior to the first pitch, and if it will take club staff longer than two hours, the baseballs should be pulled out of the humidor in smaller batches.  And, each team must make a video of the balls being rubbed!  Give me a break!  You know the teams are going to have to hire more workers to do this which means your tickets to the game will be a few bucks higher.  Well, it seems like some teams have been upset that quite a few of their players are being hit by pitchers and they are blaming it on the baseballs.  DUH!!  Did they ever think that the pitchers were intentionally trying to hit the batters?  This past weekend, a Seattle player was hit in the head.  And, Mets players were hit by pitches 19 times in their first 20 games and 50 times total entering the past Tuesday.  That means that they will be hit 117 times by the end of the season which would break the Major League record.  So you think that all this is due to the baseball?  Could it be that no one likes the Mets?  As I read more of the story I read that fewer people per game have been hit so far this year,,,if you remove the Mets statistics.  I never coached a team that had that many players get hit in a game or season.  And these are kids who have a hard time holding on to the ball that was never in a humidor.  Ah Ha!  That's the answer.  Don't put them in a humidor in the first place and the Mets probably won't get hit anymore.  And if they do, it's not because of the baseballs, but the fact that no one likes the Mets!  You know they could switch to softballs instead of hardballs so if they are hit it won't hurt as much since they are softer.  But, then they would have to buy larger humidors and the Mets are already humorous enough.  Go Phils!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  Did I mention...Go Phils!