The Baseball

by Zack Hample

  1871 The first professional league was formed. It was called the National Association of Base-Ball Players (aka “National Association”), and the ball was supposed to contain exactly one ounce of rubber. Still, some balls were not being manufactured according to the specifications. One New York ball maker boldly advertised: “Our professional dead balls … are made of all yarn without rubber and are the deadest balls made.”

  1872 Manufacturers devised a popular technique for assembling a rubberless ball. A seated worker started by stripping yarn off a wall-mounted pulley and coiling it by hand. When he felt that the wound core had reached the proper size, he placed it in a small iron cup affixed to a wooden platform in front of him. Then, with half the core poking out, he whacked it repeatedly with a wooden mallet and kept rotating it in an attempt to strike it evenly all over. After compacting the core, he added another layer of yarn and whacked it some more. Some manufacturers used wet yarn because it stuck in place better and enabled them to wind the ball tighter. These wet balls ended up too large and heavy, so they were placed in an oven and baked until they dried out and shrank. Naturally, it was hard to achieve uniformity through this process.

  1874 The rules governing the composition of the ball changed again. Now, instead of the rubber content being fixed at exactly one ounce, it was limited to no more than one ounce. As a result, more rubberless balls were manufactured.

  1875 A man named John Giblin patented a seamless ball with a vulcanized rubber cover and a core made with palm leaves. He claimed that it wouldn’t get waterlogged or injure players’ hands, but the innovation wasn’t widely accepted because the lack of seams made it impossible to throw curveballs, which had become popular in the 1860s.

  1876 On January 18, 1876, a man named Samuel Hipkiss patented a baseball with a bell in the middle. It was intended to help the umpire make tricky judgment calls (for example, whether the bat had tipped the ball), but the invention never amounted to anything more than a novelty. Three months later, another wannabe baseball pioneer named Wolf Flechter patented one of the first ball-making machines. This, too, failed to gain mainstream acceptance because it eliminated the necessary winding process: two “hemispherical depressions” were simply filled with yarn and then, with the aid of a hinge and a handle, pressed together as if the baseball were a snowball being packed into shape. Later in the season, the double-cover ball was introduced. This was essentially a completed ball with an additional cover stitched on top. It was supposed to be much more durable, but failed to catch on. The year’s biggest triumph belonged to Chicago White Stockings pitcher Al Spalding. Not only did the future Hall of Famer lead the newly formed National League with 47 wins, but he founded the Spalding sporting goods company. Spalding didn’t yet have a factory—he and his brother simply opened a store in Chicago—so he teamed up with Louis H. Mahn, a well-known ball manufacturer in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, who made rubberless balls and agreed to stamp Spalding’s name prominently on them. It was essential for these men (and their competitors) to produce baseballs at the proper size and weight; starting in 1876, if an umpire discovered that a ball didn’t meet the specs, balls made by that manufacturer were not supposed to be used ever again.

  Patent diagram from 1876; Wolf Flechter designed a machine that compacted the ball rather than winding it. (Photo Credit 6.3)

  1877 The National League ruled that the ball had to contain exactly one ounce of rubber. Mahn continued to work with Spalding’s company to make these new balls—which were evidently juiced. Deacon White, a lifetime .303 hitter whose 15-year career began with the White Stockings in 1876, claimed that when William Hulbert became the National League president in 1877, he decided to make the sport more exciting by using a livelier ball. “A core of elastic rubber was used, around which was wound tightly the highest grade of yarn,” recalled White in an interview long after he retired. “In order to put more life into the ball, the maker wrapped this yarn lightly with leather lacing, then pressed the cover on by shrinkage. Our team first ran into that ball at St. Louis about the middle of the ’77 season and we knocked it all over the city … it was so lively it almost tore our hands off, but we didn’t mind when we got to bat.” According to White, Hulbert later witnessed a particularly high-scoring game in Chicago. After the final out, the president walked onto the field, cut open one of the balls, and discovered the leather lacing. He then declared that the ball was made against specifications, ordered a recall of all the balls, and told the manufacturer not to use the lacing anymore. Finally, to ensure that proper baseballs were used, Hulbert ordered teams to obtain them through the secretary of the league.

  Spalding’s 1878 League Ball was “warranted to stand the hardest kind of usage, without ripping or losing its shape.” (Photo Credit 6.4)

  1878 At the age of 28, Spalding retired as a player in order to focus on building his sporting goods empire.4 A shrewd businessman, he not only provided balls to the National League for free but paid the league one dollar for every dozen balls in exchange for the right to call his balls the official balls. Spalding then used the endorsement to market his balls to folks all over the country. Spalding was also given the honor of publishing the National League’s official guide, which he used to promote his own sporting goods products. Before long, the guide was selling 50,000 copies a year, and Spalding got the contract to make the league’s uniforms. Section 1 of the guide specified the size and weight and materials of the ball. Sections 2 and 3 covered the parties responsible for “furnishing” the ball: the home team for regular games and the secretary of the league for championship games. Section 4 went as follows: “When the ball becomes out of shape, or cut or ripped so as to expose the yarn, or in any way so injured as to be unfit for fair use, a new ball shall be called for by the umpire at the end of an even innings [sic], at the request of either captain. Should the ball be lost during the game, the umpire shall, at the expiration of five minutes, call for a new ball.” (Henry Chadwick had suggested the time limit two years earlier.) Therefore, it was important for teams to score early in the game because the ball was often in shambles by the end.

  1880 Harry Wright, the older brother of George Wright and player-manager of the 1869 Red Stockings, decided to compete with Spalding by introducing a livelier ball. This ball, which featured a cork center with string and rubber and yarn around it, was used in an experimental game and turned out to be way too lively. As a result, Spalding’s balls became even more popular.

  1881 Al Reach, a former player in the National Association, also hoped to compete with Spalding. In 1881—four years after starting his own sporting goods company—he teamed up with Ben Shibe, an inventor and fellow manufacturer. Shibe, the future part-owner of the Athletics, was an expert mechanic and the business took off.

  1882 A rival league called the American Association played the first of its ten seasons and used the Mahn ball. Meanwhile, the National League rule that prevented the ball from being replaced during an inning wreaked havoc at the Polo Grounds on August 7, 1882. It was a rainy game between the Cleveland Spiders and New York Metropolitans, and a ball that became soggy and severely lopsided couldn’t be tossed out of play.

  1883 The American Association switched to the Reach ball as its official ball. Reach’s assembly line produced one ball every ten minutes; the highest-quality ball made by the company cost 75 cents. But the big news of 1883 was a key rule change: in the National League the umpire became authorized to put a new ball in play whenever he felt it was necessary. On July 17, 1883, Samuel Castle repatented the seamless ball. It was manufactured and marketed by Reach, but tanked once again. In an unrelated incident, a juiced-ball theory surfaced five days later in Sporting Life magazine: “It is one of the remarkable freaks of base-ball that when the Chicagoes play at home the balls used are noticeable for their hardness,” said the article. “All the outside clubs have noticed this, and the players think that Spalding manufactures an especial ball for home use.”

  1884 Another rival lea
gue called the Union Association played its only season and, according to players and sportswriters, used balls that were extra-lively. These balls were manufactured by Wright & Ditson, a company in Boston that was run by George and Harry Wright. Unfortunately, none of these balls are known to have survived, so no one’s sure what was inside of them, but it’s believed that the core contained at least two ounces of rubber. At the time, people blamed the ball for inflating offensive numbers—it certainly helped Fred Dunlap, a career .292 hitter, lead the league with a .412 batting average—but the ball didn’t seem to have much of an impact overall. The leaguewide batting average was just .245, and aside from Dunlap, only six hitters batted over .300.

  1886 Both major leagues started using a ball that contained a thin layer of plastic cement. This not only made the ball somewhat waterproof and more durable by holding the yarn in place but eliminated the need for the double-cover ball. The home team was required to provide two balls to the umpire at the start of the game. As a result, if the first ball got lost, players no longer had to spend five minutes looking for it.

  1887 This was a big year with several key advances: Rawlings was founded, the home team was required to provide extra balls if needed, and the rules specified that “the last ball in play” would be awarded to the winning team. Baseballs were still so valuable that Harry Wright, now managing the Phillies, not only kept a log of every ball that his team owned but also noted the condition of each one.

  1889 Manufacturers were still eager to make use of new technology, and Ben Shibe and Al Reach developed machinery to wind the ball—two balls at once, in fact. An employee started the process by wrapping old gray stocking yarn once around the rubber core; the machine picked it up from there and wound quickly. When the ball became half-sized, the machine stopped and cut the yarn. The employee then removed the ball and dropped it in a bucket, which, when full, was delivered to another worker at a second machine who repeated the process with half an ounce of worsted yarn. A third machine added a layer of strong white cotton thread, after which the ball received a coating of plastic cement and another half-ounce layer of worsted. The ball was then weighed, and if it was a bit off, the difference was corrected with a thicker- or thinner-than-usual horsehide cover. The machines could be adjusted to wind the yarn tighter or looser, so even though the rubber core was fixed at one ounce, Reach could have easily altered the liveliness of the ball. He had 500 employees at his factory and roughly 40,000 dozen balls in stock, including cheap balls that were made with pressed leather shavings and sold for as little as five cents. Unbeknownst to most people at the time, Spalding secretly bought out Reach but continued to let him run the operation; few people knew about it because Spalding continued stamping Reach’s name on the balls in order to create the illusion of competition.

  1890 The Players League (later recognized by historians as an official major league) played its only season and tried to compete with the two established leagues by beefing up offense in two ways: increasing the distance from the pitcher’s box to home plate by 18 inches, and using a livelier ball. The ball was made by Keefe & Becannon, a sporting goods company in Brooklyn that was founded by two pitchers.5 On September 12, 1890, these balls were slipped into play at a National League doubleheader by a pair of fans who had hidden them in their coat pockets. Whenever a foul ball sailed into the crowd, these men made sure to get their hands on it as it was passed back to the field. If the visiting Cleveland Spiders were batting, the fans returned the real ball, but when the hometown Chicago Colts were up, they tossed back a livelier ball instead—and it paid off. The Colts swept both games, by scores of 17–2 and 11–4. (Keefe and Becannon may have scoffed at the claim in Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide that the Spalding League Ball “cannot be further improved upon.”)

  1892 Still unaware that Spalding had bought out Reach, people began speculating that there was a difference between the two balls. The fact is that since all the balls were being wound by machines with different settings, there could have been a difference if Spalding wanted one.

  1894 Spalding bought out Peck & Snyder.

  1895 The National League used 3,800 balls. This amounted to slightly fewer than five balls per game and probably included balls used during batting practice.

  1896 A new rule required the home team to provide a dozen new balls per game. Around this time, the National League owners were feuding—and Spalding, who owned the Chicago franchise, was caught in the middle. The other owners got so angry at him that they threatened to take away his National League ball contract and award it to the Overman Wheel Company, a manufacturer that already made the Victor ball (which was later used by the Federal League). Spalding’s response? He bought the Overman factory to protect his contract.

  1897 The National League used more than 5,500 balls—a 45 percent increase over the previous two seasons. The average team paid $500 for 40 dozen balls, which, according to league president Nicholas Young, was “quite an item of expenditure for this necessary tool of the trade.” Young stored the balls in his home, then weighed and shipped them out whenever an owner or manager wired him to request more. Young also approved a new rule that said that if a player intentionally doctored a ball, the umpire was supposed to remove it from the game and fine him $5.

  1898 The St. Louis Browns set a record by using 17 balls in one game.

  1899 There were 400 employees at Spalding’s Reach factory, plus 700 more who stitched balls in their homes. On a typical day, the company manufactured 1,500 high-end balls (which sold for $1.50 apiece) and 18,000 cheap balls (which sold for as little as a nickel). The good balls were made with rubber in the core, four different types of yarn, and two layers of plastic cement; cheap balls had no rubber and were assembled in the factory’s cellar with jute and hemp waste. Machines cut the covers and punched holes around the edges, so for the first time every ball contained the same number of stitches. Cheap balls were made with sheepskin covers; good balls got horsehide and were rolled in a machine that smoothed the surface. Reach made many different types of balls, including the American Association ball, Professional Lively ball, Amateur Lively ball, Youth’s Lively ball, Southern League ball, Junior League ball, Junior Professional Dead ball, King of the Field ball, Cock of the Walk ball, thread-stitched League Ball, catgut-stitched League Ball, Bounding Rock ball, Champion ball, Out of Sight ball, Skyrocket ball, Dandy ball, Patent Seamless ball, and Indoor ball. The factory also manufactured other equipment, including gloves, which ranged in price from 25 cents to $7.50.

  1900 Other manufacturers began marketing balls with different stampings and nicknames such as Lula, Rattler, Atlantic, Pacific, Red Dead, Lively Bounder, Prince, King, Monarch, Bingo, Broncho, Liner, Skyscraper, Eureka, Corker, and The Boss. The Corker was probably inspired by Spalding, who experimented with a cork-centered ball, but it failed because the yarn expanded after the ball was stitched. (The cork ball succeeded 10 years later because it had less cork and the core was enclosed with a thin layer of vulcanized rubber.)

  The man himself: Albert G. Spalding (Photo Credit 6.5)

  1901 The American League played its first major league season and used the Reach ball. People assumed that the ball was juiced—that this latest “outlaw league” tried to lure fans away from the well-established National League by inflating offense—but statistical evidence suggests otherwise. The American League batted 10 points higher (.276 to .266), but hit only one more home run (228 to 227). Even if these differentials had been greater, it wouldn’t have meant much because the American League hadn’t yet adopted the foul-strike rule. In other news, the National Agreement—a pact governing all of professional baseball—caused an uproar because it stated that minor league teams were required to use a standard, official league ball. Major league executives had pushed for this so they’d be able to evaluate minor leaguers by looking at their stats. Minor league executives wanted to use their own balls because it was cheaper than having to buy them from a big-name manufacturer.

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