Judging by the Titleist script being almost illegible, betting the ball was also long past its use date. Looks worthy of a proper burial.

Are those photos of the same ball? Answering your question, I've never seen someone crack the cover of a ball. I've seen cracked ball on the course but it's usually a result of mowers

Yes only once I did have one crack was a 2023 V1 but the balls you have a pitcher of are two different balls the second one looks pretty old. I think all Titleist balls are good but everything can have a failure every now and then love my Pro V1's.

They are multi-layer so yes, they are not indestructible. Sure, it would be super rare and more likely to happen on an old, worn out ball like the lower picture. How soon we forget the days of balata balls and how much of our golf budget was spent keeping new ones of those in play. I guess we have gotten a bit spoiled by the overall quality and rarity of the ball failure. I for one would gladly have a 1 in 100,000 cracked covers and not return to the days of a balata ball not finishing 3 or 4 holes. Cheers.

Yes I have seen them. When the mowers run over them on the range. Especially those that long past their prime and that ball has seen it's better years. The top one actually seems to be hollow. If it cracked you would see the core. Very suspicious. Just sayin?