Eli5: why do you keep baseballs, footballs, hockey pucks in the US when they go into the crowd?

Question

It’s not really a thing, here, to do so. People will occasionally run off with sports balls, etcetera, but it’s not a commonplace thing.

Or is keeping these items just something we (people outside the US) see in movies or on news stories that make it seem like a regular thing?

When did it become a thing if it is a commonplace thing? Or has it always been a thing?

If it was always a thing, then isn’t it weird that the baseball league would be willing to let kids take home free baseballs when a famous athlete literally played in no shoes, and was nicknamed for it?

So many questions…

In: 0

Answer 1

> isn’t it weird that the baseball league would be willing to let kids take home free baseballs when a famous athlete literally played in no shoes, and was nicknamed for it?

I’m not sure if you’re joking, so just in case you’re not, “Shoeless Joe” Jackson earned that nickname after a single game in the minor leagues, in which he voluntarily played in his socks because his new cleats were hurting his feet. It isn’t that the league couldn’t afford to give him shoes.

That being said, in Jackson’s time and earlier, although the major leagues encouraged and even mandated refreshing the baseballs during the game (the balls quickly became misshapen and dirty, and the pitchers liked it that way), the teams themselves *were* very stingy and did everything they could to minimize the number of baseballs required to get through the afternoon. During the 19th century they had staff members go into the stands to pluck stray balls out of the spectators’ hands. The very reason you, as an outsider, know Jackson’s name at all is because his cheap owner wouldn’t pay the players enough, leading them to earn money conspiring with gamblers.

Jackson played at the tail end of the “dead ball era” when balls were rarely replaced, and it was only in the late 1910s that the league finally cracked down and started enforcing the regular cycling of the ball (in part because they realized that a fresh ball was livelier and traveled farther, and home runs were a spectacle that brought in more fans).