How to Have a Ball

ST LOUISE--Major league baseball players groan and sweat during spring training. So, it turns out, do major league baseballs.

The players have it all over the baseballs. The major leaguers stretch and twist and run under a warm sun, but the baseball's lot is to enter the Rawlings Sporting Goods Co.'s "torture chamber."

The balls are shot from cannons, pounded and squeezed--all to ensure uniformity and no rebuff any claims that "livelier balls" are the reason that someone's star pitcher is getting hammered.

"We definitely think we're producing the most consistent ball ever," said Scott Barton, an engineer for Rawlings, the exclusive manufacturer of the estimated 45,000 baseballs that we will be used in the major leagues this season.

Rawlings also provides teams with uniforms, catching equipment batting helmets and other gear, but it is the making of baseballs that is particularly difficult.

Welcome to the Torture Chamber

Rawlings is based in St. Louis, but the basic components of baseballs come from all over the world. Each component must satisfy quality control standards before the assembled ball enters the torture chamber.