The "Do You Know What They Make Baseballs From?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Leafing through my morning newspaper when I came across a story titled "At Pa. plant, dairy cows turn into major league baseballs."  Boy, did that draw my attention!  Baseball has been my favorite sport since I was born.  I played Little League, Jr. Midget, Midget, and Legion baseball thought my lifetime.  Also spent quite a few years coaching both of my sons' baseball teams and was successful enough to win a few tournaments, trophies and even a jacket or two along the way.  Today I follow local teams as well as my favorite Philadelphia Phillies!  Today I opened my LNP newspaper to page A4 and read the headline..."At Pa. plant, dairy cows turn into major league baseballs!" Wow!  Make that double WOW!  Sure enough...the story began with...Whether you're watching the Phillies, the Texas Rangers or the Seattle Mariners, the baseballs belted over the center field wall were likely make from cows that last chewed cud in and around northeastern Pennsylvania.  Dairy cows live a short life on large farms, typically just 3 to 5 years.  When their milk production drops off, the end is near.  Cargill, a beef-processing plant in Wyalusing, Bradford County, takes in nearly 550,000 cows from a 300-mile radius yearly.  Just one of those hides can make about 108 baseballs, and with 30 MLB teams using tens of thousands of balls each season, that's a lot of cows going from the pasture to America's pastime.  Seems that 7 out of 10 baseballs in the Major League had hides from the Bradford County facility.  The folks at Cargill like to think of beef processing as a circle of life, where no part of a cow is wasted.  In the processing world, that's called rendering by-products, and it's how cows become pet food, shoes or a four-seam fastball.  Cargill even harvests the cow's gallstones for herbal medicine.  My Phillies said they use anywhere from 144 to 180 baseballs between both teams in a single game.  Unbelievable!!  Over the season, including batting practice for home and road games, and bullpen sessions for pitchers, the team can use up to 54,000 baseballs.  No wonder it costs so much to go see a professional baseball game!  Baseballs don't have a long life in the big leagues: The average ball is replaced after just 7 pitches.  "Used baseballs are used for batting practice or defensive drills," said Kevin Gregg, the team's vice-president of baseball communications.  Gregg said that most pitchers are more concerned with the mud used to "scuff up" the baseballs before a game, not the actual construction of the ball.  That mud is even more of a local product, dug upon a secret tributary of the Delaware River in South Jersey.  Former Phillies pitcher Randy Wolf, who started the first game at Citizen's Bank Park 20 years ago, said not all baseballs are the same, even if they're made in the same place.   Baseballs in Arizona and Colorado, where it's drier, can feel "harder," he said, while balls in Atlanta or Florida can feel slick.  You don't want to know exactly how cows become major league baseballs.  At Cargill, it's a loud and hot process that involves a machine called a "hide puller," among other things.  Cows from Cargill's plant have ideal hides because of the climate.  "The more times a cow spends in cooler weather, the better it is for us," said Mike York, plant manager at Tennessee Tanning Co., where the hides go after Cargill.  "Our biggest enemy, for baseball leather, is bug bites, from big, biting flies and things like that.  Bug bites could leave marks on the skin and MLB has strict requirements.  The harder the winters, the less we have of that."  Dairy cows have a thinner hide too, which makes for a better baseball   The Minnesota-based Cargill inherited the baseball side hustle when it purchased the former Taylor Packing Co. in Wyalusing in 2002.  The plant, about 175 miles northeast of the Phillies stadium, processes approximately 1,500 cattle per day there.  Each year, Cargill sends 36,000 hides to Tennessee Tanning which is owned by Rawlings.  "If they miss a truckload of hides, baseball production stops," a Cargill spokesperson said.  At the tannery, York said the fur is trimmed and the hide is tanned and cut into two pieces.  From there the hides are sent to Costa Rica to be sewn at a Rawlings facility, east of San Jose, a long journey for a Pennsylvania dairy cow.  It all comes full circle in South Philly, where fans can catch a Kyle Schwarber foul ball, while eating a Schwarburger that's made of, well, you know!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.