For Rawlings baseball leather, not just any hide will do

 

Have you ever wondered if baseballs are made of leather? Or exactly what kind of leather baseballs are made of?

The answer lies in a meticulous process involving top-quality cow hides and a commitment to sustainability.

The average lifespan of a baseball in a Major League Baseball® (MLB) game is just seven pitches. Each ball, once it connects with a bat or hits the dirt, is either relegated to batting practice or sent to a minor league team.

This high demand means Rawlings Sporting Goods Company, the official baseball supplier of the MLB, produces more than 50,000 baseballs per week. That’s 2.6 million balls a year.

 

Where does baseball leather come from?

Major League Baseball has very high standards for their products. The pieces of leather used in their baseballs come from Cargill dairy cows. 

The real leather covering those baseballs comes from Rawlings’ wholly-owned tannery operation, Tennessee Tanning.

For more than 30 years, Tennessee Tanning has been sourcing most of its cow hides from Cargill’s dairy plant in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania. We provide the tannery with about 36,000 hides each year. Each hide can make nearly 100 leather baseballs.

And when it comes to baseballs at the sport’s highest level, not just any hide will do. We’re highly selective and use machines to help ensure a consistent thickness.

"Baseball leather is aniline tanned; in other words, it’s the highest quality leather," says Michael York, general manager of Tennessee Tanning. "What you see on the baseball is actually the cow hide. We don’t cover up any imperfections, so it has to be perfect."

 

The journey of leather baseballs

Cargill’s dairy plant in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, processes about 36,000 cow hides per year.  

Located in the heart of dairy country, Cargill’s Wyalusing plant is well situated to provide those perfect hides. While most of our plants deal with beef steers, the Wyalusing plant only processes dairy cattle that have provided a steady source of milk for years and have reached the end of their production cycle.

Dairy cows generally have thinner hides and fine hair. In fact, if you look closely at a baseball, you can see the hair follicles.

Geography matters, too. Located in the Northeastern United States, the Wyalusing plant processes dairy cattle from Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio and Canada. The long winters mean fewer opportunities for bug bites or other imperfections on the hide.

"We are held to pretty tight specs by Major League Baseball," Michael says. There are different grades of baseballs, he explains, but the major leagues use the highest grade.

The baseball leather is made at the tannery in Tullahoma, Tennessee, then shipped to a Rawlings facility in Turrialba, a small town in Costa Rica, where baseball leather stitching takes place.

York says he chooses to get the majority of his hides from Cargill not only because of the quality coming out of Wyalusing, but also because the company understands that he needs a reliable supply.

"It’s a high-profile product, and Cargill helps keep our supply intact,” York says. “We produce 20,000 square feet of baseball leather per week and hold zero inventory. If we miss a truckload, that’s a problem."

 

A home run for the bioeconomy

Cargill uses renewable, biological resources — such as cow hides — that would normally go to waste and turns them into food, materials and energy. 

For Cargill, supplying hides for leather is part of our philosophy that in animal agriculture, no part of the animal should go to waste.

It’s also one way we’re advancing a circular bioeconomy in agriculture. That means we’re using renewable, bio-based resources — like plants, microorganisms and even waste — to produce food, materials and energy.

Our Wyalusing plant processes an average of 250,000 tons of beef each year, and we ensure all parts of the beef cattle are put to good use. The same goes for dairy cows that reach the end of their productivity. These cows provided a steady source of milk for a number of years, and at the end of this cycle, they are processed into ground beef and other by-products.

"We believe that this shows the ultimate respect for the animal and ensures that we are getting the most out of the production process," says David McCullough, director of Cargill’s by-products business.

When the roughly 1,000 employees in Wyalusing go to a Major League Baseball game or watch one on TV, they can take pride. When the umpire says, “Play ball,” they know they played a role in the game.

"I’ve visited the Wyalusing plant several times," York says. "The local team understands our business. They know where those hides are going, and it means a lot."

 

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