The first commemorative baseballs for 2020 have dropped! The spring training baseballs for the Grapefruit and Cactus league are out, and they look absolutely fantastic.
The “Official 2020 Spring Training” stamping with Rob Manfred’s signature stays the same as previous years, with only the date changing. Also the same as last year is the actual logos themselves do not feature the date! This year they do feature the FL and AZ as previously used in the past.
Lets first take a look at the Grapefruit League logo. I think it is fantastic, a rough outline of the state of Florida, a small MLB logo up top, and a grapefruit cut in half brings it all together. I am a big fan of the font they used for the FL. It works great. I do not love that there is no year, but at least it has FL.
Next up, the Cactus League baseball. Once again we see a state outline, of course this one is Arizona, and we get a nice small MLB logo. We also get the AZ in that same font. The pics are not great, but it appears to be a smaller shorter bushier type of cactus featured on the ball, it almost looks like a normal plant. To be quite honest I do not like this one as much as the FL, a more traditional Cactus should probably be more prominent.
An interesting note, we can see a very small trademark symbol in the lower left hand corner, it is an interesting development, spring balls have not had them before and I do not think we’ve ever seen that featured on a mock up before. Maybe a new standard?
As always, I will update the post when actual photos of the baseballs themselves come out!
You can get these on eBay here(AZ), and here(FL).
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P.S. Article on the rest of the 2020 commemoratives, with speculation and confirmed ones in the works coming soon!
The balls look great!