Barry Bonds - Ball Change?

[aracko]

What the heck is he talking about - changing the balls in Cincinatti?

 

EDIT: Removed excessive punctuation.

[Boy Jeenius]

They have specially marked balls that authenticate the home run balls, to avoid fraud.

[Ennder]

They mark the balls so they know which balls are part of the record. I think they are marking the last 10 or something like that.

[TheBwaz]

Barry got some new ones cause the roids shrunk the others. Very distracting.

[pretendastronaut]

And they do it for a lot of milestones. I know they did it for Biggio's 3,000 as well. I believe it was the final 10 hits there as well.

[FVBrewerFan]

I was confused until it dawned on me 10 minutes after the interview. What bothers me is why didn't Gammons have any follow-up questions? I respect him a ton, but I'm very disappointed he didn't follow-up with any questions after Bonds dropped a bomb shell like that on national TV.

[rluzinski]

What bomb did he drop? That seeing them switch balls makes him think about hitting HRs?

[FVBrewerFan]

Maybe I took it wrong, but it sounded like he was insinuating there was something wrong with the balls. Frankly, I thought he was basically saying they were using dead balls.

[Ennder]

I didn't take it like that at all. He said he tries not to look at them changing the balls because it gets him thinking about hitting HR's which isn't a good thing.

[Tedaldtada]

The way I took it was as the ball approaches the plate, the new mark on the ball can be seen as it spins. Thus the mark is throwing off Barry's read on the ball because he can't pick up the movement/spin/center of the ball as easisly. I know Ted Williams always said he could read the lettering on the ball as it spins, so maybe this slight differance in the appearnace of the ball as it approaches the plate is throwing Barry off.

[rluzinski]

1. I thought the marking were only visable under a blue-light

 

2. If we are talking about the HR Derby interview, all he was talking about was possibly subconciously trying to hit more HRs when he saw the balls changed.

[Ennder]

Dont' get me wrong I hate Bonds and think he's a complete Nob, but people are really reaching to say he somehow blames the balls for his lack of HR's.. He is blaming his own approach at the plate for it.

[FVBrewerFan]

You put me in the uncomfortable position of apologizing for saying something negative about Bonds. But alas, I did watch the interview again on my DVR. I now understand he wasn't alluding to using "dead" balls when he's hitting.

 

I was mentally tuning in and out of the HR derby, and I heard him wrong. I think it was subconscious because it sounds like something Barry would say.