Practice Baseballs

I am not sure what you consider reasonably priced but I have been using the Wilson A1010s blems.  These are the Wilson premium ball but supposedly blems although I found them to be in perfect condition.  At $43 per dozen they are not cheap per se but a great value.  I buy them 5 dozen at a time and they have held up well.  My previous go to ball was the Diamond DOL-1 and these are nicer and hold up longer.

https://www.closeoutbats.com/w...-baseball1-blem.html

There are many old posts about this - here's one from last year:  https://community.hsbaseballwe...ic/61699676374710786 . The blem A1010s mentioned in the link are reasonably priced (my husband spoils our kid with Wilson A1010 hs 1 balls for xmas and birthday gifts).

22and25 beat me to it!

When he's at home, my son hits in the cage with balls that are 5-10 years old.  Many of these we found in the bushes at the ball field, mostly Little League balls with a few HS balls mixed in.  If/When they get wet I'll lay them out and let them dry.  I've got a bucket with 3 dozen of these and they work great for tee work and soft toss.  You may think I'm crazy but after hitting dirty old 6oz baseballs for a while, those newer 5oz balls really fly when he gets back to campus.  He'll use a newer ball for throwing.

43 dollars is not bad as I have been giving $ 90 for thirty Diamond's. I have heard some good things about the Wilson so it's probably time to give them a try. Thank you for the information!

Every summer I volunteer to keep the book for LL all-star games. Guess who is responsible for giving umps the new balls and guess where all the foul balls go. Right into my bucket. The local league always has a ton left over so they let me keep them for volunteering. Usually good for 2 buckets every summer.

definitely newer better balls for throwing and older for cage and tee work. Swing, feel, muscle memory more important in the cage than a ball that would go another 10-20 yards outside.

For pitching, the real leather and laced balls are preferable. If doing a lot of PG events, you might want to snag a few Foul balls as the threads are lower/thinner on PG balls and feel/behave a tad different....

We also use A1010 blems. I have been able to snag them anywhere in the $30 to $38 range. When I see them go on sale for $30 I stock up.

When are just looking to grab a quick dozen to fill the bucket up all the way, we will snag a dozen of the Dick's house brand leather baseball. For $30 they are not a bad option. When they send out coupons for like $15 off $50 or something like that, it really makes it a decent deal. I like to use these balls when I take my bucket out to games. I know that I will always come home missing 4 or 5 balls each game. So I don't get as upset when those balls go missing.

Funny on the comment about the PG balls. Out at the WWBA this past summer, they didn't care if foul balls were coming back at all. They just kept throwing more balls out into the game. I had my backpack hanging in the dugout and the boys kept putting foul balls in there. I actually came home with about a dozen near new PG balls. I actually had to throw some of those into a recent local PG tournament since our field ran out of baseballs.

I was looking to get these for hitting. They’re blem’s.

https://bownet.net/products/bl...-EAQYASABEgJxoPD_BwE

I ordered a couple dozen A1010's to try out. Hopefully they will work well for us. Surely the boys won't wear them out by the time season starts. Thanks for everyone's input.

@Triple J posted:

43 dollars is not bad as I have been giving $ 90 for thirty Diamond's. I have heard some good things about the Wilson so it's probably time to give them a try. Thank you for the information!

A couple things...

First, you do realize that $43/doz and $90 for thirty is about the same, right

Second, some balls do hold up a bit better than others and quality varies but still, take any baseball (leather cover with yarn windings and a small rubber core) and have a HS age kid hit it as hard as he can 2000 times and it's gonna break down and get soft/dead.

Third, you can't just rate by brand.  Each brand covers the spectrum from more expensive, better models to cheaper ones.  You have to pay attention to specific models within the brands.  The cheaper ones always have inferior covers, inferior pills and almost always break down faster.  A true blem of a better model usually makes a great value practice ball.

Aside from that, advice from posters above is sound.