Crowds will go wild for these professional baseballs and at the heart of each one is something called the pill.
The pill is smaller than a golf ball it’s about four and a quarter inches in circumference. Inside the pills rubber casing is a sphere of cork.
They pour latex adhesive over hundreds of pills loaded into a drum rollers. Speed up the drum to evenly coat the pills with the adhesive.
Next they loop four ply wool around the pill. This machine spins the pill to wind the yarn around it.
This winding substantially fattens the pill. They wind a second layer of wool around the pills. This yarn is three ply and it thickens the ball a little more.
For a third winding they use another three ply yarn but it’s a bit lighter. The various layers of yarn are what give the baseball resilience.
So it springs back into shape despite being hit repeatedly. For the final winding they use a much thinner poly wool blend because its surface is smoother.
This wound pill is called the center. They add adhesive to a spinning drum then load the Centers into it. Using hydraulic press they punch out figure eight shapes from leather complete with holes around the periphery allowing them to be stitched into baseball covers.
They press two cutouts to the center sticky surface. It’s an exact fit. They clamp the leather clad ball in a vise and it’s time to working with two needles.
The sower pulls thread through the ball Center and up through the holes in the leather pieces to cross stitch them together they make quick work of the 108 stitches in each baseball ball.
The final stitch goes through the center of the baseball and out the other side the sower then pull stitches into a V configuration to give the ball a consistent look and feel.
The balls now roll into a press that smoothes down the seats. Finally a three headed Stamper gives it the trademark, League logo and the Commissioner signature with drying cycles.
It takes a week to make a professional baseball. It will be whacked and slammed out of the playing field but that’s life in the big leagues