THEY'RE OUTTA HERE!

To commemorate the tail end of a Cleveland Indians season best forgotten, I'm posting one of several baseball features and brief pieces I wrote for the Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine. Ever wonder how many balls a team goes through over the course of a game or a season? So did I, which is why I pitched this piece that ran in the summer of '00.

David Searls

Kenny grabs an inning-ending pop fly and flips it to an imploring fan. Manny drives a hanging curve over the left field wall. Nobody on the Indians staff knows more about how quickly major league baseballs disappear than equipment acquisition/distribution manager Jeff Sipos. It’s the 17-year vet’s responsibility to keep the team stocked up—a real challenge when balls leave the playing field at the rate of about one every four or five pitches. And that’s not counting batting practice.

"(Former manager) Hargrove liked to have his players hit only new balls during b.p.," says Sipos. "Charley (Manuel) will use older ones as long as they’re not too dinged up."

Six or seven dozen dazzling white balls are rubbed up and given to the umpires before every home game. They go fast, what with Jacobs Field’s cozy dimensions and the Herculean efforts of Ramirez, Thome and friends. Plenty more leave the game as foul balls or via the tosses of generous coaches and ballplayers. And when a ball exits the field of play, it never returns.

“Can you think of any other sport where they give the equipment away to the fans?” Sipos grumps.

He also points to umpires as big offenders for the way they reject balls for even the slightest imperfections. Not without good reason. "You give a sneaky pitcher a dented ball and he can make it sing."

Batters can get in on the act too, requesting that umpires pull balls they judge to be a little too worked over. Not surprisingly, Sipos nominates mercurial ex-Indian Albert Belle as the pickiest ball hitter.

Those Tribe baseballs that don’t end up in the appreciative grasp of fans continue a life of sorts even after their brief major league careers are over. The path to retirement takes them to batting practice, then to the indoor batting cages and on to the team’s minor league affiliates. Sipos freights two boxes of about seven dozen balls each to all of the six minor league clubs every month for batting practice. The final stop from there is often to local Little League teams throughout the farm system.

All of which means that the Tribe goes through 1,000 dozen balls in spring training and 2,700 dozen during the season. That totals over 44,000 balls at the rock-bottom cost of about four-and-a-half bucks apiece, or some $200,000 a year. That’s not even counting the post-season or the new-ball needs of all the minor league teams. Think about that the next time you beg first base coach Ted Uhlaender for the foul ball snagged near the box.