Well, it’s been a long 5 months, but that time of year is FINALLY here. Yes, that’s right, it’s officially baseball season. More importantly, it’s ball hawking season. So, what should we expect? To be honest, I’m not expecting much different coming into this season compared to last year. In fact, I’m expecting less as far as traveling goes due to different personal reasons. However, there ARE a few notable changes that are worth mentioning.

We’ll start off with probably the biggest change of all, the fact that levels below Triple-A are FINALLY beginning to use the brand new Minor League ball! What am I talking about, you may ask? To summarize, Minor League Baseball changed its logo in December of 2023 with the expectation of that logo appearing on the league’s baseballs in the coming year. Fast forward to March of 2024, and those balls were nowhere to be seen in use. Fast forward again to February of this year, and we finally got photos of these balls being used in Spring Training. Lucky for me, I happened to get my hands on A DOZEN of them, so here’s a photo:

As you can see, along with the new logo, these balls also feature a much lighter blue ink than in years past. I’m personally a HUGE fan of this new look, and CANNOT wait to get to some lower level games to snag a crap ton of them.

Next, we have a change in scheduling for the International League. How so? BRAND NEW TEAMS! Okay, maybe not brand new, but teams that haven’t come to PNC Field since as far as the 1990s! These teams include…

• Toledo Mud Hens
• Charlotte Knights
• Nashville Sounds
• Indianapolis Indians

So, what does this mean? Fresh faces and brand new opportunities! Just think, what if I snagged the first home run since their respective dates they were last in town from ANY one of these teams? It’d be HUGE!

In relation to this, we’re also going to see some MAJOR renovations to PNC Field. I don’t have photos yet, but the Railriders have a new and improved clubhouse, along with the visitors batting cages being relocated to…outside? I don’t know what that’s all about. All I know is that it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder to snag foul balls outside of the stadium. I can only imagine that the extended clubhouse is going to swallow up anything that goes over the 3rd base line, and anything near the right field foul pole is probably going to be blocked off by a gate. Womp womp. Maybe it’ll mean more toss ups outside???

Finally, I’ve finally perfected the design for my ball retrieving device. As some of you may know, I developed a device that’s on a telescopic pole and has a lightbulb changer on the end of it to reach balls in areas such as the batters eye, or on rooftops such as the one below in Binghamton, NY.

The problem I faced, however, was that the lightbulb changer was at an angle that wouldn’t allow it to wrap around the ball and not hit that guard rail at the same time. It’s taken me 2-3 different designs, but I finally figured it out. Observe:

Notice how I can now position it at different angles? This is going to be huge, especially for scenarios where I can snag game home runs and fouls high up. Sky rocketed numbers? I say, yes.

That’s basically it though, nothing too extreme to note. I’m hoping to produce a lot more videos than last year, it was a crazy year in 2024 and creating content just wasn’t on my priority list. Now, it’s at the top of that list. So sit back, relax, and come along with me on some crazy adventures this season. You won’t want to miss any of it!