What does game issued mean?

[jataman2612]

I tried to do a search to see if this has been talked about but the page kept erroring out so if this has been previously explained, i apologize. I found a bat this I was told is game issued but it has baseball marks on it.

If it has baseball marks on it, how is it game issued and not game used? could it have only been used for batting practice?

[volunteer]

Players often swap bats so it could have been used by another player.

[vince182]

I tried to do a search to see if this has been talked about but the page kept erroring out so if this has been previously explained, i apologize. I found a bat this I was told is game issued but it has baseball marks on it.

If it has baseball marks on it, how is it game issued and not game used? could it have only been used for batting practice?

Sometimes employees and authenticators don't physically SEE the item being used by a player, therefore they are required to give it a "game issued" title, even though it may have in fact been "game used". If they can't prove it, they don't list it as game used. (They also tend not to waste their time looking back at game footage to photo match it, as that is too time consuming. But that's where you come in!, if you want piece of mind knowing a certain player used your bat)


Hope that helps!

[danesei@yahoo.com]

Game issued generally means:

Bats - Ordered by the player or the team that they're on the roster for.
Jerseys - Ordered by a professional team for players.
Fielding glove - Ordered by the player to their specifications.
Batting gloves / cleats - Designed for use by the player.

Now, there's obviously room for interpretation, but that pretty much covers the concept of game issued, as opposed to game used.

The second part of your question regarding bats with marks that are labeled as issued:

The following classes of bats could (should?) be considered issued and not game used/worn:

BP bats
Bats in the rack that never actually make it into a game
Bats found to be insufficient by the player for use in the game
Bats given away by the player to whom it was issued

Now, on top of this, there is also the category of promotional bat and pro-cut jerseys. These would be items that might be sold on eBay as "Game issued," even if they were never intended to be used in a game.

If you're specifically asking about the MLB authentication program, that's a different story. There was a Matt Wieters bat that was on eBay where the authentication said game issued, but the authenticator noted that the player (Wieters) stated that he had used it in a game. So, it's likely the case that the authenticator must witness the item actually being used in the game. Now, this contradicts the fact that uniforms are often flagged as "game used" for players who never enter a game. It really depends on the team's/authenticator's policy. I recall someone mentioning that MLB is attempting to train the authenticators to adopt a standard for determining what should be game used or issued.