Rawlings baseball dating (dot) system

[danesei@yahoo.com]

Does anyone know if teams were required to adhere to the dot system for games supplied to umpires for use in games? The reason I'm asking is there's a 1977 (two dot) ball that was supposedly used early in the 1978 (should be three dot) season that I'm curious about.

[danesei@yahoo.com]

Does anyone know if teams were required to adhere to the dot system for games supplied to umpires for use in games? The reason I'm asking is there's a 1977 (two dot) ball that was supposedly used early in the 1978 (should be three dot) season that I'm curious about.

Ugh... I meant to say balls supplied to umpires.

[dplettn]

I have a ball with provenance to early 1980 which has 4 dots. As another point of reference, there were factually Selig balls used early this year.