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As they say, it happens every spring. It's baseball time again. As I sit in front of my TV watching the millionaires play a child's game I soon become aware that almost every time an outfielder catches a fly ball on the final out of an inning he throws it up into the stands. Here ya go folks, free baseball! Also, of course, with each homerun over the wall and every foul ball that goes into the stands, that ball is out of play and a new one is introduced into the game.
When I was a kid we used one ball and it usually lasted our entire childhood. I don't think I ever had more than one of two baseballs in my life. I didn't need any more since the ball was used primarily to play catch with my dad and brother. And since there were no stands with fans watching us play, we never tossed our balls over the fence. It wouldn't occur to us to toss them away any more than it would occur to us to toss our gloves over the fence. Hey, these things cost money, as my dad would say. After we played, the gloves and ball were carefully put away, ready to be used again at another time.
But for the major league players, although they don't yet toss their gloves into the stands, the baseballs are thrown away at a regular rate. This makes me wonder, just how many baseballs are used in a major league game? I happen to know the answer to that question since I looked it up. In a typical major league game, between 96 and 120 baseballs are used. And approximately 900,000 baseballs are used every year across MLB. That number includes regular season, playoffs, and practice sessions. That number also includes baseballs that have been discarded because of being damaged or simply too dirty. Can't play with a dirty baseball, right?
Okay then, the next question is how much do these baseballs cost? Well, at a sticker price of about $7.00 per ball, it costs Major League Baseball approximately $10 million a year to keep all the stadiums in balls for a year. A relative bargain when you consider that baseball bats cost between $300 to upwards of $2,000 per bat for big league customized bats. Every time you see a busted bat, that's hundreds of dollars split to smithereens.
Baseball gloves are considerably less costly at anywhere from $250 to $500 a glove, depending on the brand and model. Star players have them custom made and usually don't pay for them. The manufacturer gives it to the players in exchange for the product placement advertising.
Then you've got all that protective equipment such as arm and shin guards, and batting gloves, and then there's that big hand covering thing that they all use when they get on base so if they start to slide head first into the next base, they not only protect their hand, but it gives them an extra inch or two toward the bag. All this stuff cost money as my dad would say.
The cost for equipment is nominal when you take into account that the average ballplayer in the majors makes around $5.34 million. At about 26 active players on a team's roster, that translates to around $140 million a year in salary, give or take a million or so. But don't feel sorry for the league, the MLB pulls in around $12 billion in revenue each year. The Dodgers alone made $1 billion last year in gross revenue. So I guess Major League Baseball can afford to toss a few baseballs over the wall to their fans. After all, if you think about it, it's the fans themselves who are paying big time for the privilege of catching a $7.00 baseball thrown to them by Teoscar Hernandez or Andy Pages. It's a steal, as my dad would say.
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