The Hammock Papers: Authentication.

24 August 2021

Authentication.

The Freep's Evan Petzold delineates the extensive process involved in authenticating The Big Fella's 500th Happy-Go-Jacky ...

How does the authentication process work?

For every major league game at Comerica Park, we have two authenticators working, one in each dugout. They come from a third-party company, organized by Major League Baseball. They all have law enforcement backgrounds. They treat game-used items like evidence for a trial. If they don't see it, if it leaves their sight, they won't authenticate it. Every game-used baseball that comes off the field gets rolled to one of our authenticators, and they put a hologram on it. Using the Statcast data, every hologram will tell you who pitched it, the type of pitch, the speed of the pitch, who hit it, the launch angle, the speed off the bat, the distance traveled and the result of play. The level of detail is phenomenal. Unless the ball is hit into the stands, home run or foul ball, we get it and capture the data. Each game I'll get 45-95 balls, and we'll go through each hologram and audit every single one.

If you can't authenticate a ball that leaves the sight of the authenticator, such as a home run into the stands, how are you going to authenticate Cabrera's 500th home run?

"We've gone to great lengths with Major League Baseball, and we will be able to do it. Every ball that is pitched to Miguel after his 499th home run has been stenciled with a letter-number and has been covertly marked with a fluid that only MLB authenticators can see. It's sort of like black-light fluid that we see under black light, but this is a unique type of fluid that only authenticators can view. When Miggy is announced and he's batting, the ball boy comes out and replaces the balls with the umpire. When Miggy's at-bat is done, he then takes the balls back and puts the regular balls back in play. The umpire and ball boy will know what ball — m-5, m-76, m-89 — that was hit in the stands. We'll then retrieve that ball, identify the covert marking and put the hologram on it. For home run 501, it'll be back to normal. If it's in the stands, we can't authenticate it.

MLB used special baseballs for Miguel Cabrera's plate appearances after he reached 499 home runs. Cabrera crushed his 500th home run — the m-113 ball — on Sunday, Aug. 22, 2021 in Toronto.

CONNECT

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MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL