the boys of summer

so i had the opportunity to enjoy myself in the bleacher seats at fenway park earlier this week and watch my red sox beat tampa bay. as is typical when im at a game, i feel like i have ADD. sure im paying attention to the play on the field but there is so much downtime during a game that i start watching the crowd, dugouts, umpires, bat & ball boys, security, field crew...you get my point.

a few years ago major league baseball decided to be a little more fan friendly. part of this initiative was throwing balls into the stands as fan souvenirs at the end of innings. which got me to thinking about how many balls does a major league baseball team use during the course of a season and at what cost?

MLB seems to be fairly tightlipped on any specifics but after doing some research it seems to break down fairly close to this.

** the home team is required to have 5 dozen balls at the ready for a game
** a balls typical lifespan is 6-9 pitches
** there are roughly 250-300 pitches thrown per game
** which means that 35-50 balls are used per game
** which means that each team uses 2800-4100 baseballs in a season
** which means MLB uses between 84000-123000 baseballs during the course of a season (i did read in some places that it could be as high as 160,000 but in doing the math it seemed a little too high)

** im assuming that MLB has a special bulk contract with rawlings since they use so many balls in a season. but lets stipulate that they pay the normal rate.
** rawlings charges $170 for a dozen baseballs
** which means every team spends between $39000-$174000 per season on baseballs
** which means MLB spends between $1.1M-$1.7M per season on baseballs


so my initial thought from the bleachers was that giving away baseballs to fans was an expensive way to gain fan loyalty to the team and league. but if you consider that the average ticket price at fenway park is now slightly over $50 (MLB baseball average is $27), it may not be such a bad idea. 35000 fans at $50 each is just shy of $2 million PER GAME! or the cost for 11 seasons worth of baseballs.

happy 4th of july everyone!



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