History
An Undercover Invention: Baseball Covers and Stitching (Baseballs Part 2)
Source: This article was sourced from Alison Oswald’s October 25, 2010 post on the Smithsonian Collections Blog as part of a 31-day Blogathon in October for American Archives Month
I had a vague recollection that baseballs were hand-sewn, but surely technology had caught up with this small, but significant cultural object. I guessed wrong. I began to delve deeper and what I discovered is that the baseball cover stitching process has resisted mechanization.
The United Shoe Machinery Company was formed in 1899 by the consolidation of the most important shoe machinery firms in the industry—Goodyear Machinery Company (made machinery for sewing the sole to the upper in welt shoes), Consolidated Hand Lasting Machine Company (made machines for lasting a shoe), and McKay Shoe Machinery Company (made machines for attaching soles and heels). On May 1, 1905, the new company became officially known as the United Shoe Machinery Corporation.
The merger revolutionized shoe equipment manufacturing and the shoe industry itself. With this merger, conflicting patents were eliminated and patents supplementing each other were brought under United’s control to permit their prompt combination in a single machine or process. To ensure efficiency, the new company also continued the practice previously followed by its constituent firms of renting machinery instead of selling it.
Schematic of mechanism for a baseball cover sewing machine designed by S.J. Finn, March 1949. Drawing by Don Hamm. From United Shoe Machinery Corporation
After the 1899 merger, United grew rapidly. By 1910, it had an eighty percent share of the shoe machinery market, with assets reaching forty million dollars, and it had acquired control of branch companies in foreign countries. USMC was headquartered in Boston, and its main manufacturing plant was in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Starting as early as 1949, the company undertook three experiments to create a baseball stitching machine: These three projects document experimental work in the area of baseballs, specifically automatic controls, component inserting, and stitching. The objective of the experimental projects was “to develop a suitable baseball covering equipment for mechanizing to the greatest practical extent both parts of the present discretionary hand lasting-lacing operation.”
The full development included an analysis of the hand procedure and how each portion of that work would be handled. The ball starts as a round cushioned cork center called a "pill" then is wrapped tightly in windings of wool and polyester/cotton yarn, and then covered by stitched cowhide. The process of assembling a baseball involved two types of workers: assemblers (who assembled the core parts of the baseball) and sewers (who stitched the cowhide covers onto the baseball by hand). There were 108 stitches in the cowhide leather of each ball, and each was done by hand.
Research personnel at USMC recognized that this development would be extremely difficult and expensive. Indeed, from July 1950 to November 1961, the total expense of the project was $343,000. In 1950, the economics of baseball stitching were detailed in a cost chart. The labor rate for lacing was $0.15 – $0.20 per ball, with a production rate of five to six balls per hour. Clearly, mechanizing would increase the production dramatically.
Very little consideration had been given to the mechanization of conditioning and preparation of baseball covers for machine stitching (this being the case both inside and outside the company). All attempts that we know of have been principally with the mechanization of the stitching.
Engineers at USMC broke down the problem into five areas: cover assembly (lasting); needle threading; start of stitching (anchoring the first stitch); stitching or lacing; and lastly, final stitching (final thread anchoring).
Previous automated machines exhibited two serious problems: they were unable to start or stop the stitching process without manual assistance, and they were unable to vary the tension of the stitches. From 1950 to 1955, the basic model work was conducted, resulting in equipment that demonstrated the operations.
Previous automated machines exhibited two serious problems: they were unable to start or stop the stitching process without manual assistance, and they were unable to vary the tension of the stitches. From 1950 to 1955, the basic model work was conducted, resulting in equipment that demonstrated the operations.
In 1955, formal design and detailing were initiated to resolve existing engineering and design problems and to record, in drawing form, several pieces of equipment necessary to accomplish the overall objective.
Handmade baseball
One of the problems was the lasting of the baseball cover. Haas’s earlier work related to baseball sewn covers and an apparatus that sews together the edges of a baseball. Joseph Fossa held several patents for baseball sewing apparatus, principally methods for spheriphying baseballs and for methods of assembling by sewing the cover pieces of baseballs. The “inventive talent” of Finn, Haas, Fossa, and countless other USMC engineers all assigned their patents to the United Shoe Machinery Corporation under the direction of a robust patenting program.
Spherifying baseballs refers to a culinary technique where a liquid center, in this case, the filling of a baseball, is transformed into a sphere-shaped gel with a solid outer shell, resembling a whole baseball.
Many of the baseball manufacturers, such as A.G. Spaulding, J. de Beer and Son, MacGregor, Wilson, Lannon Manufacturing, George Young, and Tober Baseball Manufacturing Company, were aware of USMC’s efforts to create a stitching machine. While the customer base was limited in number, the potential revenue from a stitching machine could have been substantial. Because of insufficient interest on the part of these baseball manufacturers (at this point the baseball industry was not sufficiently organized to sponsor the development of a machine) and unresolved problems by the company’s engineers, the experimental work orders were closed.
Little-known experimental baseball stitching machine made by the United Shoe Machinery Corporation (USMC) of Beverly, Massachusetts.
Their development program was curtailed in 1961 when the Baseball Manufacturers Committee of the Athletic Goods Manufacturing Association declined to support further development, and their management made a decision not to further fund the program without industry support. The baseballs stitched on USMC’s model machine were more uniform in appearance than a hand-laced ball, but there was some speculation that a major league pitcher could tell the difference and would prefer a hand-laced ball. While the economics of the time were considered good, the company could not justify spending more money on the project. Other than increasing the company’s knowledge in the area of stitching technology, there was little likelihood that a broad application would result.
Baseballs mostly are still hand-sewn today. Attempts have been made to automate the process of stitching cowhide covers on baseballs, but none have been successful.
Play ball!