SUSPICIOUS baseball fans have finally been vindicated: gradual alterations to
the official balls used in today鈥檚 game are making it easier to score home runs.
The balls now fly about 10 per cent further, says Dennis Hilliard, a forensic
scientist at the University of Rhode Island.
Although baseball officials and official ball-maker Rawlings Sporting Goods
have said specifications have changed little since 1931, fans have grown
increasingly suspicious since the Major League record of 61 home runs in a
season鈥攚hich had stood for 37 years鈥攚as shattered twice in 1998.
Sammy Sosa hit 66 and Mark McGwire hit 70.
To find out why, a sports radio station asked listeners to send in balls to
Hilliard鈥檚 team for analysis. They dissected offerings from 1963, 1970, 1989,
1995 and 2000. They found balls from 1989, 1995 and 2000 had plastic mixed with
the wool-fibre winding under the cover, which gave them more bounce than the
1963 and 1970 models. The rubber and cork cores of the 1995 and 2000 balls were
much 鈥渓ivelier鈥�, bouncing 208 centimetres high when dropped from 462 cm,
compared to a 157-cm bounce for the earlier balls. Major League Baseball
officials have not responded to a request for comments.
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