Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
April 14, 2000, Washington Post

Cleaning Up Baseball

How many baseballs do you think the Major Leagues use in a season? The total for all 30 teams?

The answer: 700,000. That's almost enough to give one ball to every person living in Baltimore.

Why do they need so many? Well, Rawlings, the company that supplies baseballs to the Major Leagues, says that the average baseball lasts only six pitches. Six pitches before it's fouled off into the stands, knocked out of the park, or scuffed up.

In the old days, when legends such as Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth ruled the diamonds, baseballs were used much longer. If a ball got dirty or beat up, it stayed in play. In fact, pitchers who wanted to make the ball hard to see and difficult to hit would rub dirt or spit tobacco juice on the ball.

And if a ball was fouled into the stands, ushers at the park would go get it and put it back in play.

But on Aug. 16, 1920, a major leaguer was hit by a pitch and killed. His death changed baseball forever.

The unlucky player was Ray Chapman, a solid but unspectacular shortstop for the Cleveland Indians (career batting average of .278). On that dark and drizzly August afternoon, Carl Mays, a star pitcher for the New York Yankees, fired a fastball toward the plate. It flew high and inside. Chapman didn't move quickly enough. The pitch hit him in the head. Batters didn't wear helmets in those days and the blow knocked him out.

Chapman died the next day, the only major leaguer ever killed from a game injury.

Some people said that Chapman didn't move out of the way because he couldn't see the ball as it flew from Mays's hand. They said the ball was too dirty and scuffed up.

Because of that tragedy, major league umpires make sure that only fresh white, easy-to-see balls are in play.

Now, if a baseball gets so much as a mark on it, it's "outta there!"