Today, we’re heading to the plate to examine where Major League Baseballs are made. America’s history with organized baseball began 149 years ago with the creation of the National League. Today, Major League Baseball (MLB) includes 29 teams in the United States and one from our brothers up north in Canada.
In the 1840s and 50s, baseballs were quite commonly just made by pitchers. In 1876, a retired pitcher named AG Spalding talked the National League into naming his ball the official standard. The Spalding company grew and purchased Rawlings, a sporting goods maker, in 1955 for the purpose of continuing their baseball manufacturing. Rawlings remains the official producer of MLB baseballs today.
One MLB game uses between 96 and 120 baseballs, and there are 162 games every year. That comes out to over 19,000 baseballs a year. But that’s only accounting for official games, not practices or consumer sales.
When the “average life” of a baseball is about seven pitches, you go through a lot of them. And some baseballs never even make it to the bat. A pitcher can toss one to the side if it doesn’t feel quite right. For all these reasons, the MLB goes through a truck-load, well, several truck-loads of them.
We’d like to know where all these Rawlings baseballs are coming from. Get yourself some peanuts and cracker jacks and read on to find out.
Verdict: Are MLB Baseballs Made in the USA?
No, baseballs for Major League Baseball are not made in the USA. The MLB sources baseballs manufactured by Rawlings and these are produced in Costa Rica.
After some initial research into who supplies the MLB with baseballs, we found out that it was Rawlings Sporting Goods. A scan through their website confirmed this through their “official” branded balls:
They have a large selection of MLB balls available to the consumer. However, the product information pages of these items do not detail where each type of ball was manufactured. We contacted Rawlings to speak with a customer service agent.
Rawlings has been producing MLB Baseballs in Costa Rica since 1987, when it opened a facility there. Here, they make up to 2.6 million balls a year, which covers the massive demand for Major League Baseball itself and what they sell as MLB-branded to the consumer.
Just as the customer rep clued us in on, they may be sewing the balls in Costa Rica, but the leather originates from the US. Cargill Operations, a global agriculture partner, provides Rawlings with 36,000 hides a year, each one being used to make around 100 baseballs. The majority of these cow hides come from Cargill’s dairy plant in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. The hides are processed at Tennessee Tanning, located in Tullahoma, Tennessee, and sent to Costa Rica for manufacturing.
So, are MLB baseballs made in America? No, but the cows that ultimately make them are. Maybe we can call this one a “tie.” Unfortunately, there are no ties in baseball. Our box score says the MLB balls are not American made.
