With a new kind of bloom, Woodland Hills attorney turns baseballs into ornamental roses ...Middle East

Attorney Gregg Garfinkel is obsessed with baseball and the Rose Parade.

So he took up a hobby that combines both.

He makes roses out of used baseballs. Sells them on Etsy, to baseball youth leagues at a discount for use in fundraisers, as gifts for mom’s on Mother’s Day and to baseball lovers all across the San Fernando Valley.

Now, the Porter Ranch resident wants to help out the bands that struggle finding the cash to make it to the annual parade in Pasadena by donating half his proceeds to the Tournament of Roses, which has a small fund used for helping bands traveling long distances pay for expenses.

“I would love to help,” he wrote in an email after reading an article in this newspaper about bands coming from other states ponying up more than $1 million to march in the parade through pizza, even mattress sell-a-thons. “I would be happy to donate $10 per rose to the Tournament of Roses per sale.”

While the parade’s bands are already committed to the 2026 event and many to next year’s parade, too, Garfinkel hopes to negotiate with the TofR for future years and future bands that are invited but can’t afford to make the trek and deliver a thrill to teenaged band members.

“The bands are my favorite part of the Rose Parade,” said Garfinkel on Dec. 30.

Of course, the baseball roses can’t adorn a Rose Parade float. Only organic materials such as flowers and seeds make it onto those floating displays of ingenuity and pied beauty.

Regardless, his roses are loved as unique keepsakes made with a personal, crafty touch, star-dusted with a “Field of Dreams” feeling evoking his love of the great American pastime.

After about six years, he’s now selling about 3,000 each year.

“I’ve done baseball roses for weddings, graduations and funerals and sometimes they are placed on the graves of important coaches,” he explained. “I’ve sold them for any event where somebody is being celebrated or mourned — especially if they are baseball fans.”

Believe it or not, the making of an artificial rose is a thing. YouTube is filled with DIY videos.

Garfinkel’s hobby-turned-side-hustle began kind of by accident. With his sons playing in baseball leagues, fundraising included selling Christmas trees. But for a Jewish family, that was a problem. “Who was I going to sell Christmas trees to?” he asked.

Instead, he started making holiday wreaths out of baseballs. He and his son, Ben, as a senior on the Granada Hills High School team, sold 16 wreaths quickly on Facebook Marketplace. His son was the highest fundraiser in the league that year, he said.

Garfinkel is a litigator and a partner with a law firm in Woodland Hills. He needed a creative outlet to exercise his right brain.

Also, he had a boatload of used baseballs from practicing with his kids and from coaching Little League baseball for 16 years. He also collected them over the years of attending Major League Baseball spring training games in Arizona and buying used ones from sellers on ebay.

Some people have lots of books, or tchotchkes. “I had accumulated hundreds of baseballs,” he said. “So I said well, instead of throwing them away, I can turn them into something for people as fanatical about the sport as I am.”

He starts with a synthetic rose and removes the rose bud and petals. He uses an exacto knife to cut open the baseball, slicing the leather covering complete with red stitching into petal-shaped pieces. After tossing the yarn, rubber and cork, he attaches the leather “petals” using a hot glue gun. The stem, a plastic and wire rod, is attached and a ribbon tied and the baseball rose is born.

He has been selling them at the Farmer’s Market in Porter Ranch and at opening or closing day baseball league ceremonies. Last year, he sold 800 to a baseball league at a wholesale discount, who sold them as Mother’s Day fundraisers.

“The roses on the floats you have about five days to see them before they go bad. These roses don’t go bad,” he joked.

As a lawyer who has practiced for 35 years doing business law in state and federal courts, life can be stressful mentally. In the evenings and on weekends, he heads to his garage where he makes the roses on a worktable.

“This is a completely different side of the mind than when I am practicing law. It helps me bring happiness to people. And it is a way to unwind,” he said.

On Garfinkel’s page on Etsy, called Baseballidays, are found baseball roses, baseball keychains and even a baseball bat Menorah for sale. The crafty internet selling site, plus word-of-mouth in The Valley grow him customers. “I have enough business to keep me busy,” he added.

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