The name Reuben Berman probably doesn’t mean much to most baseball fans.

But, as Pete Peterson explains in his latest edition of Reading Baseball, if you’ve ever been fortunate enough to get your hands on a ball hit into the stands and to take that ball home as a souvenir, you can thank Mr. Berman.

Reading Baseball is a series of essays and commentaries by Richard “Pete” Peterson, the author of Growing Up With Clemente and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.