AP: Company Says 1998 Baseballs Juiced (Big Mac's 70th)

Well, if you had half a brain, asshole, you'd have known there was a lot written about the juiced balls.
No, I did not write about it because I was not covering MLB at the time. I know a number of writers, however, who wrote it more than once in the course of the home run barrages from McGwire to Bonds.

And yes, I am being self-righteous and you are being the same douchebag asshole you always are.
So go fuck yourself, shithead.

 

Factory reveals secrets of making a baseball
Last Updated: Friday, November 10, 2000 | 11:59 PM ET
CBC Sports
His fingers flying over a half-sewn ball in a mass of red and blue stitching and snow-white leather, Geovani Hernandez said all the home runs being hit this season are having a noticeable effect on his work.
"It does seem like they need a lot more baseballs," said the 19-year-old, who can hand-stitch 58 in a 10-hour day. "They are really encouraging us to stay later and make more balls recently, maybe because of all the home runs using up balls."

Hernandez, 19, is just one of 500-plus sewers whose rows of work tables fill a floor longer than a football field at the Rawlings factory where all of the baseballs for the major and minor leagues are made.

Since age 13, he has confronted his one-piece workbench -- a metal stool attached to a small, white tray mounted with a special plastic vice to hold the ball in place. To his right hangs a clear plastic bag full of the finished balls and the coverless, stringy shells that he will soon turn into baseballs.

"I think it's harder to hit a home run than it is to sew one of these," Hernandez admitted, with the toughest part getting the pointless needle through the first of 108 specially cut grooves.

"But I bet I know the balls they use in the big leagues better than any player."

None of the employees making a base salary of about $1.10 an hour here have heard of the theory that St. Louis-based Rawlings may be producing baseballs with tighter centres to make crowd-pleasing home runs more common.


No one has heard the rumours that balls are sewn by machines that could be re-calibrated to add a bit more oomph.

No one knows what a juiced baseball is, and they certainly wouldn't know how to make one.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2000/05/23/ball000523.html