Collecting Game-used: A piece of Citizens Bank Park included

What did you land for your last $10 spent 0n collectibles? There's really no wrong answer there -- and there are a lot of possibilities for collectors of pretty much anything out there right now -- but not that long ago I landed a dozen game-used baseballs from the Philadelphia Phillies for, yep, $10 apiece.

This is one of those balls -- and it even included a BallQube -- but I still think it's a nice item for the price.

It wasn't a blind-bag scenario as I picked off a dozen MLB Authenticated game-used baseballs from the cheapest of the cheap -- picking out highlights from a spreadsheet -- as the team was burning off end-of-year inventory along with other balls from the past. The cool part about collecting from the MLB bargain bin for stuff from recent years? You can often find your exact ball (or see other dated game-used items) over in the MLB Film Room, which is a searchable database of pretty much every single play.

You can keep reading to see the details on this one ... and the ball in action.

THE BASICS ...
Game-used ball (MLB Authenticated): Philadelphia Phillies vs. San Francisco Giants -- July 31, 2019
Watch it in action: Click above.

The matchup: Phillies RP Adam Morgan vs. Giants SS Brandon Crawford
The result: Ball in the mud, top of sixth inning

What's Buzz-worthy: The play happens quickly in the video above -- and it's actually simple stuff here -- but there's one thing you wouldn't see about this ball on a spreadsheet list of names and plays or even in the video. That's the amount of mud from Citizens Bank Park that was left on this ball on what wasn't a super-speedy pitch at all during a 5-1 Giants win. (Check out the gallery below.) What's still crazy to me is how MLB Authentication adds all of the info here (see first pic in gallery) but also that the Film Room also tells you more ... the spin rate on this ball for this play is among the details (second pic in gallery). What does it mean? Does it matter? I'll leave that to the advanced stats crowd but it's crazy that it's there ... and might be there for all pitches. (Since it wasn't a hit there's no exit velocity, launch angle or hit distance ... but they'd be there if that had happened.) Crawford is a past All-Star and Gold Glove winner -- a somewhat iconic player for the team right now -- so that caught my attention in the bargain bin and it didn't hurt I could add this to my school ties part of my collection with Morgan. (I grabbed a few of his as I had to find 12 to get a bonus ball I wrote about here.) It wasn't a great outing or anything for him as he served up a homer to Pablo Sandoval, a single to Crawford and a homer to Kevin Pillar before getting Joe Panik out, but Buster Posey also hit career home run No. 139 in the game so there's that extra trivia. So, yeah, this is a $10 ball in the mud -- with the mud today to show for it -- but there's a lot to see here for this ball (and many others these days), too.

>> See all past Collecting Game-used stories from Buzz here

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