MLB has balls!

The Game Room
1

A recent search gave the price of a MLB baseball at $17.

A team must go through 100’s in a game. Foul balls, scuffed balls, souvenirs, and balls gifted from players must amount to quite a few.

What would a MLB team pay for a years supply of baseballs? I realize it probably is not very much compared to salaries, but it must be up there, no?

I believe I heard an announcer say that players used to be fined for tossing balls into the stands. Is this true? When, why and how did it change?

Thanks fans.

2

I suspect MLB’s cost is nowhere near $17, which I assume is a retail price for a “real” baseball at Sports Authority or whatever.

Call up Spalding and tell them you want 10,000 baseballs, please. Betcha get a great price.

The only situation I know of where players were fined for tossing balls to fans is under one or more of the famously cheap manager/owners. I am pretty sure that, within reason, it’s accepted in most teams. Part of the game, unless you’re so stingy you make players wash their own socks.

3

To say nothing of what the league as a whole pays for the special mud from some guy’s back yard in New Jersey that they lovingly massage into every single ball before it’s introduced into play.

4

17x150x82= 209,100. I’m sure MLB pays way under 17 per ball.

The NFL fines for throwing balls in the stands. I was never aware there was a time MLB ever did the same except maybe back in the very early days.

The main reason for using so many balls is that a pitcher can make the ball do all kinds of tricks if the ball is the least bit scuffed or cut.
Also, a dirty ball is harder to see by the batter.

5

Yeah. MLB isn’t paying the same amount that the fans are.

6

Baseballs get pulled from use whenever they get hit, pretty much. So if a player has a ball in the field that has been hit it’s not going to be used again. They want the balls to be as uniform as possible, and a ball that has been struck or hit the dirt during a pitch is out of spec.

The average life of a ball is just a few pitches. This changed in the 70’s, before balls were kept in play longer and you could get fined for tossing a ball to the stands - FOX Sports News, Scores, Schedules, Odds, Shows, Streams & Videos | FOX Sports

7

Reported for forum change.

8

Off to the Game Room!

9

I recall Mickey Mantle saying that he was called into the front office for tossing a ball in the stands, and they told him it wasn’t his ball to give away and he had to pay for it.

10

Wasn’t there a decision made to actually encourage players to throw balls (say, from fly-ball outs in the outfield) into the stands in an attempt to win back fans after the strike in 1994?

11

I’m pretty sure that the Home team supplies 144 balls to the umpire to be rubbed down before a game. That must be more than they use on average or they’d increase it.

12

But who checks to see if they are properly inflated??

13

I’m not a sports fan at all, but wouldn’t the opposite be true? IOW wouldn’t a manufacturer *give *them the balls free as well as pay them (MLB) to do this just for the rights to claim them as being “The Official Baseball of the Major Leagues” ?!

14

The Patriots’ equipment managers?

I don’t think that would be a very good business proposition. At 144 per game, I calculate MLB uses over 2 million baseballs per year and that’s just for the regular season, not preseason or the playoffs. If it costs $3 to make a ball (rough guess on my part), that would be over $6m just for that privilege. Sounds very high to me.

Don’t know about encouraging players to toss balls to the fans, but the ballgirls are always giving them away. They usually give them only to kids. Often you’ll see boys or girls whose seats are a dozen or so rows up going down to beg them for souvenirs.