USC baseballs travel long road before hitting pitchers' gloves

 

Well, you made it this far.

 

You are nestled in a glove, the pitcher’s fingers placed perpendicular to your seams for a four-seam fastball. He winds up, lifting his left leg, cranking his right arm forward and hurtles you toward the unmistakable ping that an aluminum bat makes when it collides with you. In an instant, you are flying in the opposite direction, landing in the stands.

 

A USC student could pick you up and return you for a free $5 gift card to McAlister’s Deli. Or a child wearing a “Fear the Fish” T-shirt could race to you and claim you for his own. If this happens, you are not coming back.

 

But don’t fret. It’s no matter, really. You are one of about 660 dozen baseballs the University of South Carolina Gamecocks go through each year.

 

One of 7,920.

 

If all of you were lined up end to end, it would be enough to stretch from home plate to first base more than 20 times. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the No. 1 team in Baseball America’s preseason ranking, goes through half that amount each year.

 

“We do order a lot of balls,” said Kyle Lipsey, the director of baseball operations at USC. “I don’t know if anyone orders the amount that we do.”

 

The reasoning is twofold. For one thing, Lipsey said, Carolina Stadium is not designed for retaining baseballs.

 

If you are rocketed over the third base fence, you will land on a grassy hill and roll toward the Congaree River.

 

Gone.

 

If you are popped on the right side of first base or anywhere over right field, you will smack into the asphalt on Williams Street and become too scuffed and dented to return to play.

 

 

 

Gone.

 

And if you are fouled back onto the roof of the press box or coaches’ offices, you will most likely end up stuck in the gutter.

 

See ya.

 

The second reason rests with athletics director and former head coach Ray Tanner, who started the custom of ordering substantially more game balls than practice balls. Generally, teams order lesser-quality practice balls for scrimmages and batting practice, saving the official Rawlings R1 balls for games.

 

“I’m of the mentality that you want to play and practice with the ball you’re ultimately going to use,” Tanner said. “We want players to adjust to real-life conditions, so when you practice, the ball should be new.”

 

Although the athletics department does order an average of 110 dozen practice balls, according to Lipsey, it orders an average of 550 dozen game balls. At around $5 each, the baseball budget for the university would be nearly $40,000, but the SEC gives the university a significant subsidy, Lipsey said, because the balls are mandated by the conference.

 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. A lot has to happen before you make it into a game.

 

 

 

The Beginning

 

 

 

You start life as a small rubber ball with a cork center. A machine wraps you in four layers of wool yarn to fatten you up and enable you to bounce back after being hit repeatedly. Two figure-eight pieces of leather are then hand-stitched together with exactly 108 stitches to form your recognizable red and white cover. For the Major Leagues, this happens in one special factory in central Costa Rica. You, like the majority of other baseballs, are made in China.

 

As a future Gamecock ball, you are the property of Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, Inc., a leading manufacturer and marketer of sporting goods in the United States. Rawlings became the official supplier of the NCAA College World Series in 1999.

 

The majority of colleges and universities use Rawlings baseballs, according Mark Kraemer, the company’s marketing and licensing manager, but South Carolina alone probably uses more balls than some smaller conferences as a whole, he said.

 

By boat, you sail from China to Washington, Mo., a city just outside Rawlings corporate headquarters in St. Louis.

 

Around Thanksgiving, you make your way to South Carolina via Federal Express truck. You arrive at T and T Sporting Goods, a family-owned establishment across the street from the state fairgrounds. All the Gamecock baseballs are stored here for the year.

 

Carter Ellis Jr. has been working at T and T for 23 years and stringently monitors the baseballs that come in and out of the store.

 

“Baseballs have a tendency to grow legs,” he said.

 

Lipsey usually keeps one to two cases of baseballs at Carolina Stadium at a time and gets more from Ellis on an as-needed basis. This way, there is more space in the Gamecock equipment rooms and coaches and players are deterred from using more balls than they actually need.

 

The arrangement between the sporting goods store and the university — call it a gentleman’s agreement — has been going on “since forever” according to Ellis, and he alone gives permission for balls to leave the facility.

 

If an intern or an equipment manager comes to pick up baseballs, Ellis will first call Lipsey to confirm the transaction.

 

“Nobody knows this little brick building does what it does, but we take pride in doing it,” Ellis said. “We love each and every one of our baseballs.”

 

 

 

The Middle

 

 

 

Once you make it to the stadium’s equipment room, it’s time to get rubbed up with baseball mud. Think of it as an exfoliating massage, meant to remove your raw slickness and pearl-white sheen.

 

Carter Scheetz, a third-year sport and entertainment management student at USC, carefully removes your plastic wrapper. Then he dips his fingers in a tub of Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud, a unique muck used by every Major and Minor League baseball organization. And the Gamecocks.

 

It comes from a secret spot on the banks of the Delaware River in Delran, N.J. It is dark brown, odorless and much more sophisticated than the infield dirt used on baseballs in the old days.

 

At $43 for a standard tub, it’s expensive mud.

 

But a little goes a long way. It only takes a small dab of mud mixed with water to rub up a ball. One tub will last the team a whole season, Lipsey said.

 

Normally, Scheetz will rub up five to six dozen baseballs before a game. He said the process usually takes about 30 to 40 minutes.

 

So now you are game-day ready. You are off-white and smooth, sitting in ball bags in the dugout and waiting to be warmed up. Umpires check you out, feeling your texture and placing you in the ball pouches attached to their hips. This is it.

 

Well, maybe. Sometimes game balls don’t even make it into play. Former Gamecock pitcher Sam Dyson, now a pitcher for the Miami Marlins, was notorious for being picky about baseballs and tossed many aside before ever throwing them to a hitter, Lipsey said.

 

“Some of them just felt slick to him or he just didn’t like the way they were,” Lipsey said, “and as soon as the umpire would throw the ball to him, he’d look at it and throw it back to the dugout.”

 

Both pitcher and umpire can throw out balls during play if they don’t like the way they feel.

 

If this happens to you, don’t take it personally. Most balls can be brought back into the game for different pitchers.

 

On this season’s team, sophomore relief pitcher Evan Beal considers himself the pickiest about the baseballs he throws. Even the most minor imperfection in a ball can bother him, he said.

 

“If I throw a ball in the dirt and it skips or gets scuffed, I’ll usually throw it to the dugout,” said Beal, who usually tosses out two to three balls per inning, not counting the ones that get fouled or hit out. It helps him handle the unpredictability of pitching.

 

“There’s a lot of things you can’t control in pitching,” Beal said. Being able to change the balls out “mentally makes me feel more in control.”

 

If you feel OK to the pitcher, there’s still a good chance you won’t last long. In the Majors, the life of a game ball is about six pitches. At Carolina Stadium, a game ball could last one pitch or a whole inning, Lipsey said. You never know for sure.

 

“We do get a few back, but when kids get them, or if it’s a special game or a special player, you know they want to keep that ball, and we understand that,” Lipsey said.

 

But let’s say you make it through a game. Maybe you were rolled to the dugout after being chopped to left field. Maybe you hit the dirt on a low pitch, and the umpire tossed you aside. Now you become a practice ball.

 

As a practice ball, you are a little damaged and worse for wear, but still valuable. Your job is to help players perfect their throwing and catching. Before each practice, you are dropped in a ball hopper, a netted basket that is wheeled onto the field. Coaches hit grounders and pop flies to infielders and outfielders to sharpen their skills. You get grass stains. And dirt scuffs. Your ink starts to smudge.

 

 

 

The End

 

 

 

Eventually, you become too worn to be a practice ball. Your next stop is the batting cage, where baseballs go to die.

 

Every day, players come in for hitting time, using you until you start showing your age and fraying at the seams. The synthetic turf grass of the indoor facility is harsh on your already-shabby leather exterior. The lip on the aluminum bat slices into your loosening cover. The pitching machine plucks at your red stitches.

 

Such is the life of a baseball. You may be able to endure this for quite some time, but you finish your days lying in the cage’s ball hopper, scratched, scuffed, busted. They throw you away.

 

You’re out.

 

 

 

Editor’s Note: This story was used courtesy of the USC School of Journalism.

 

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