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Baseball legend Pete Rose has died at 83, reports say Rose won three World Series titles and was the 1973 N.L. MVP, and earned 17 All-Star Game nods.

Why does Major League Baseball seem to waste so many baseballs?

They don’t waste them. Baseballs that are scarred and marked up during gameplay, even if they are just a little bit smudged from hitting the ground for whatever reason, get thrown into buckets to be held over and used — usually by the home team — for batting practice, fielding grounders and sh****ng fly balls before games and on practice days in between games.

Some of the cleaner ones are sold as souvenirs, and I’m sure many get signed by ballplayers.

As for why they get tossed out of games so quickly in the first place, it’s because of Ray Chapman, shortstop for the Cleveland then-Indians in the early 20th century, who was killed by a pitch he never saw coming because the baseballs in those days were *not* so quickly removed. The same ball would regularly remain in play for an entire game.

Not surprisingly, the ball would become very disfigured, dirty and often blended in with the field of play or wooden fencing or open backgrounds. Chapman was hit in the head by such a pitched ball on August 16, 1920, and died the next day.

From then on, for liability reasons, primarily, but also for player safety, Major League Baseball began removing baseballs as soon as they have been marred.

To this day — knock on wood — Chapman remains the only fatality ever to occur during the course of the regular action of a Major League Baseball game.

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I am close until Monday 7-15-24 for a family vacation

We are heartbroken to learn of the passing of Hall of Famer Willie Mays, one of the most exciting all-around players in the history of our sport.

Mays was a two-time MVP, 24-time All-Star, 12-time Gold Glove Award winner, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In commemoration of "The Catch" as perhaps the most famous play in the history of the Fall Classic, the World Series MVP Award was named in his honor in 2017.

Mays was 93 years old.