Collecting Game-used: No MLB Authentication ... Part V

Not every item in every MLB game gets one of those special little silver stickers and not every moment is captured on film ... or at least film that is easily found. (Video? Maybe.)

In a nutshell, that sums up this month's item in this Collecting Game-used series. You can see a teaser of what's left of the pice above with pine tar and shards of what looks like maple left behind. Thankfully, while there's a lot of mystery to this one, the identifying side of the barrel remains in play ... and that is why I grabbed this piece for my personal collection.

You can keep reading to see the details.

THE BASICS ...
Game-used basics: Nick Swisher Marucci Swish33 Custom Cut LDM bat -- likely broken sometime during 2014 season.
Watch it in action: Nope, not this time.

What's Buzz-worthy: I've picked off a ton of bats for my player over the years -- sometimes in more than one piece and sometimes with missing pieces for sure -- but this one is right up there in terms of its oddity as three-fourths of the back of its barrel is lost to history. Whether this break was from a batting practice mishap (based on model and taping it's not likely, though he did try a lot of brands later in his career) or game-use I'll never know ... unless somebody out there has a whole lot of access to full games where every at-bat of his 2014 season after the bat's creation date could be checked -- but even then that might not be conclusive. What's known here? The bat was finished/shipped on April 28, 2014, based on its knob stamping and that would mean it was doing his time with the Cleveland Indians toward the end of his career. I checked all available Getty Images stills from that season and struck out. The MLB Film Room might have had some use if this was a far newer piece but ... nope, too old. When I first found this one awhile back -- at a bargain fraction of what a full-priced bat would run -- I scoured all spots I normally would and struck out. Despite that, and despite this one not having an MLBA sticker, I'm still confident that it's legit with his barrel taping one of the reasons why.

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

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