Collecting Game-used: Fresh Lava from down on the farm

Sometimes, unraveling the mystery is part of the fun with gamers ... and that mystery part doesn't happen as often with MLB stuff where it's almost as if everything that's used on a field or during a game can get an MLB Authentication sticker and have a place in a database forever before it hits a collection or gets chopped up to live inside a baseball card.

But down on the farm before they are big-leaguers? It can be a different story. Sure, stuff gets documented and auctioned/sold with a team letter or certificate quite often -- especially at the end of a season when the players are gone (and might not come back next year) -- but not everything. Baseballs? Nope. Caps? Not often. Helmets? Sometimes. Buzz did some on-the-cheap power-shopping in recent months and landed a few game-used caps from MiLB action and this first one is from the Columbus Clippers, the Triple-A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians.

Most of my items in this Collecting Game-used series are MLB or other things that are ironclad in their documentation or I have been able to photo-match the item exactly to a photo, video or event. This time? Not so much, but it did have some features and some mystery that worked out for a bargain price -- cheaper than some packs of cards out in the retail wild -- and it turned out to be a player who got a taste of the major leagues in 2022, too.

Keep reading to see the details this time.

This time, the key clue was inside the cap.

THE BASICS ...
Game-used cap (purchased via team): Columbus Clippers 2023 home cap
Watch it in action: N/A ... not this time.

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The Player: Catcher Bryan Lavastida (hit .233 with eight HRs and 33RBI in 52 games in 2023)

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What's Buzz-worthy: Ultimately this was a blind-buy on the cheap -- the team sells game-used caps where you can pick them out based on the style (they have worn a bunch) and the size but not players. I grabbed two because a sale knocked the price down to just under $14 each and, well, that was worth the shot to tell a story here. (Regular price $20, by the way, over on the team's site.) I picked up a home cap since I think it's the simplest color and model and the photos from the 2023 team baseball set matched these -- the photos were all shot at home and I threw one of those in (on sale), too. When I got my cap, it was dirty -- that's a bonus in this realm) and then I looked inside to see it marked not with a jersey number (that's how my other one, a different model, is noted) but with "Lava" and that was a name that, disappointingly didn't appear in the card set (it was of 2022 players). I hit the roster and there's the obvious name emerged, Lavastida. Bingo. Of course, then I wondered to myself ... would a catcher really be wearing a cap during time on the field and not a helmet? That's when I did a dive on the Clippers Twitter feed and it didn't take long to find a "Wallpaper Wednesday" post meant for fans with phones that showed the catcher wearing his hockey-style mask with one of his caps -- if not this cap though I can't prove that) -- underneath with the MiLB logo and New Era logo showing as you can see right here. (I actually forgot to take a photo of that side when I got these in-hand earlier this month, but it's there.) That explains some of the dirt for sure -- on both the front and the back. Why wasn't he in the card set? Well, Lavastida played for both the Clippers and the Akron RubberDucks in 2022 after he had started the season in the majors -- six games with one hit in 12 at-bats but also three walks for Cleveland. He's hit .263 with 33 homers and 209 RBI in 368 MiLB games over five seasons so all looks respectable on that front for him to be playing somewhere this coming season. This past season also was split between Columbus and Akron, so as long as the 25-year-old is in the picture for the Clippers next year he should have a baseball card in the 2023 set ... maybe that's when my dirty cap will be seen once again?

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

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