By Rick Stanton
Get your mind out of the gutter. This column is on baseballs.
As you may know, I played a lot of baseball and various forms of softball over the years. And I’ve watched a lot of baseball, too. My first recollection of seeing a game on TV was around the mid ’50s on our little round-screen Philco. Look that up millennials!
One of the things I recall from those days was that the only time a baseball came out of play was when it went into the stands. Today, if a pitched ball gets thrown in the dirt, out it goes and a new ball enters the game. The primary reason is to keep a pitcher from using scuffed baseballs that might give him an edge against a hitter.
How you ask? If the ball is discolored or defaced it might make a pitch do extra “funny things.” Think Gaylord Perry and Vaseline, Rick Honeycutt’s taped tack in the finger of his glove and various other ways pitchers cheat.
But here’s the part I don’t get: a ball gets crushed into the outfield, likely having some effect on its roundness (think exit velocity), then it hits the warning track and bounces around and the outfielder scoops it up and tosses it back in. It bounces once or twice again on the infield dirt—but it stays in the game.
There are 30 teams playing 162 games against an opposing team. Hence, 15 (each game having two teams) x 162=2,430 games per season. According to Major League Baseball, an average of 65 balls are used per game. So, 65 balls x 2,430 games means that 157,950 baseballs are used during games in the regular season.[The post-season going on now only adds to the count.] The average cost of a dozen baseballs is around $72. That means MLB is spending just shy of a $1,000,000 on game-day baseballs!
All of that begs for a rational explanation as to why a pitched ball in the dirt goes out of the game, while one crushed into the gap that’s punished far more stays in play? But it may explain in part why six beers at Safeco Field cost around $80.
And it should underscore that, if you’re in the stands and someone hits a screaming foul ball at you, don’t try and catch it because—if you miss and it hits you in the head— the likelihood of eating with a fork again is slim. And all for a $6 baseball?
https://www.foxsports.com/other/story/major-league-baseballs-have-a-short-shelf-life-062912
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/sports/baseball/24series_side.html