Ball Waste

[jtur88]

The Cleveland announcers got word last night that, after a bit over 500 pitches in the 13th inning, they were into their 16th box of baseballs. Thats approaching 200 balls for 500 pitches, let's say one new baseball for every three pitches. At that rate, about 100 balls per average game, at $10 a ball, MLB spends three million dollars a year on baseballs. Three dollars a pitch. One sellout crowd's ticket prices barely pays for the baseballs for a season.

Is there a compelling reason that a baseball cannot be thrown more than 3 times, on average, before it has to be replaced? How would the quality of the game be harmed if a ball stayed in play for 4 or 5 or even an amazing six pitches? It's not like an ice-cream cone. You can pick it up and go on using it.

[Triad]

Originally Posted by jtur88

The Cleveland announcers got word last night that, after a bit over 500 pitches in the 13th inning, they were into their 16th box of baseballs. Thats approaching 200 balls for 500 pitches, let's say one new baseball for every three pitches. At that rate, about 100 balls per average game, at $10 a ball, MLB spends three million dollars a year on baseballs. Three dollars a pitch. One sellout crowd's ticket prices barely pays for the baseballs for a season.

Is there a compelling reason that a baseball cannot be thrown more than 3 times, on average, before it has to be replaced? How would the quality of the game be harmed if a ball stayed in play for 4 or 5 or even an amazing six pitches? It's not like an ice-cream cone. You can pick it up and go on using it.

I don't think they did this a couple decades ago. Now, whenever a pitch goes in the dirt, it gets thrown out. I'm assuming it's never used in any game after that. A foul ball that one of the base coaches fields, or the ball girls/boys field — those all get thrown out. I never understood why a ball that hits the infield dirt on a grounder remains in the game, but somehow that dirt around the plate renders it unplayable. I think they're a little paranoid. They should spend all that money on supplying wood bats to college teams.

In our Little League games, we generally use either one or two balls for the whole game, and that's about 250-300 pitches, and the ball still looks pretty good. Often the only reason a ball doesn't come back into the game is if it gets lost on the way back from where it was fouled to.