Collecting Game-used: Sometimes there's no extra visual ...

Sometimes, there are no extra visuals to photo-match a piece

Forget sometimes ... that's almost always the case with pretty much everything that's game-used before the advent of the MLB Authentication program in 2001. That was the year MLB started stickering and databasing items from the field of play creating a whole new playing field for memorabilia. But this month's piece in this Collecting Game-used series isn't from that past era, either.

This one is from just 2014 ... an item that's newer, but one from when the capture-every-play MLB Film Room and complete data with authentication for every pitch where a ball was used didn't exist. It's stickered but short of finding a pirated game video online (I did a brief search and found nothing), it's a ball that I can only show here and then offer up from info from a game's summary to help tell its story.

You can keep reading to see the details.

THE BASICS ...
Game-used ball (MLB Authenticated): Cleveland vs. Baltimore -- May 22, 2014
Watch it in action: Not this time

The matchup:  Cleveland 1B Nick Swisher vs. Baltimore RP Preston Guilmet
The result: Strikeout in 11th inning

What's Buzz-worthy: I picked up this ball pretty cheap and did so since it's one of only a few times I've been able to track down a ball linked to my player, Swisher, who has been retired for a while now and played his last MLB game in 2015. The sequence above -- three strikes looking -- likely means this ball was used for all three pitches in a game that the visitors won 8-7 in the 13th inning ... a quick catch between Guilmet and catcher Steve Clevenger. This was the pitcher's only strikeout in two-plus innings of work that day. He had only 28 Ks in his entire five-year, 29-game MLB career -- this being his sixth strikeout -- and it also was the longest appearance of his season. For Swisher, it was one of two Ks that day and 111 that season, which was his next-to-last campaign and essentially his final full year. It's not a memorable piece for him but these older baseballs just don't pop up as often all these years later. It's a pretty clean ball with an Orioles 60th Anniversary logo to make it a little different than many, but ultimately it's just a pretty anonymous ball like thousands out there. Hey, but at least it has a sticker ...

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

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