The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches (Vintage) by Hample Zack

Author:Hample, Zack [Hample, Zack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307742087
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-08T05:00:00+00:00

Inspectors at work inside “the racks” (Photo Credit 7.8)

Each rack is a floor-to-ceiling unit with 120 gutterlike rows. Each row is long enough to hold 40 balls. And since there are six racks, there’s way more than enough space for the factory’s daily output.

Once the balls have dried, they get rolled again and sent to another room for the final inspection. Symmetry, stitch alignment, roundness, color, stains, scars, and even faint traces of insect bites on the cowhide—that’s what the inspectors look for. They also weigh and measure the balls and wipe them with a cleaning solvent to remove any excess wax or oil. (In some cases, the solvent removes the invisible ink as well, so if you examine your own baseballs under a black light and some don’t have the secret code, that’s why.) Finally, the inspectors sort the balls into three categories based solely on their appearance; the balls that make it this far are all within the specs for weight and circumference, so it’s just the minuscule cosmetic defects that determine where they end up. Perfect balls are approved for game use, while those that are ever-so-slightly off will end up in one of two places. They’ll either be designated as practice balls and offered to teams at a discount, or they’ll get sold commercially in retail stores.

Next stop: the stamping machines. Two of them sit just across the room from the inspectors, and they look rather intense. There are plastic tubes, metal cylinders, and colorful switches and buttons and warning lights. It’s like a maze of robotic parts—a mad scientist’s dream—but the actual stamping process is fairly simple. Each machine has three rubber heads positioned above three different ink plates, and each plate is embossed with a different portion of the logo. (The top portion says “Rawlings,” the one in the middle features the commissioner’s signature, and the bottom section has the MLB silhouette.) Just below the plates sits a cup-shaped holder. An employee has to place a ball there every two seconds. That’s how long it takes for each automated stamping cycle. The heads get lowered to the plates simultaneously. Then they come back up for a split second before going back down to the stamp the ball. Then they come back up. Then they touch the plates. Then they come back up. Then they stamp the ball. Then the plates. Then the ball. Plates. Ball. Plates. Ball. Get the picture? The machine is programmed to operate at that pace, so the challenge lies in keeping up with it and positioning the balls just right. If the employee doesn’t place a ball in time, it’s no big deal. The stamping heads will simply come down and whiff, and the cycle proceeds uninterrupted. Meanwhile, a second employee removes the freshly stamped balls and places them on a conveyor belt that passes through a heated area. Thirty seconds and 200 degrees Fahrenheit later, the ink is dry.

The balls are pretty much done after this. All that remains is a grueling two-part testing process in the factory’s quality lab.

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