The Pastime

From the AP:

The commissioner’s office is telling teams for the first time that balls must be stored at a uniform temperature after they are delivered from the manufacturer.

“The specifications that Rawlings recommends are a 70 degree temperature and 50 percent humidity,” baseball senior vice president Joe Garagiola Jr. said Friday.

“We have contacted all 30 of the clubs, and they have all confirmed to us that they will all be storing their baseballs in a temperature-controlled facility. We’re not going to have humidors everyplace, but every place will be temperature controlled, and so I think there will be a very high degree of uniformity.”

This was rumored last summer, but is now a certainty. This will effectively reduce the variation in baseballs that could have been contributing to park factors. I’d imagine in a place like Arizona, where it’s as dry as Colorado, scoring will be slightly depressed, while in Florida, where it’s traditionally very humid, scoring might increase a tad.

Also interesting is that MLB has now specified that teams must use baseball manufactured in the current year. Was there some issue with teams using older balls previously? I can’t imagine what benefit that would have, as I have no idea how the aging process affects the performance of a unused baseball.

This should end all controversy over the Coors humidor, although I’m still not completely convinced that MLB shouldn’t have looked into it. I think Jeff Cirillo would agree.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 5:32 pm and is filed under General Baseball, Rumors, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.