You pick up a baseball and it feels simple. Also, white leather, red stitching, a little weight in your hand. Most people never think about where it came from. They assume it's made in the USA — maybe in a factory in Ohio or Pennsylvania, somewhere with a name like Wilson or Spalding stamped on the building.
Here's the thing: it's not. And it hasn't been for a long time.
What Is the Official MLB Baseball
Every single baseball used in a Major League game comes from one company: Rawlings. Think about it: they've held the exclusive contract since 1977. On top of that, before that, it was Spalding for the better part of a century. But since the late '70s, Rawlings has been the only name on the ball.
The ball itself hasn't changed much in decades. Rawlings and MLB both said the manufacturing process didn't change. " (Spoiler: the drag coefficient changed. In practice, mLB even started monitoring the balls more closely after the home run surge of 2019, when everyone started asking whether the ball was "juiced. Wool windings. Poly-cotton blend. Here's the thing — the specs are baked into the rulebook — size, weight, coefficient of restitution, all of it. Full-grain leather cover. On top of that, the ball flew farther. Cork and rubber center. In real terms, 108 double stitches, all done by hand. Draw your own conclusions.
But the question most people actually want answered isn't what* the ball is. It's where* it comes from.
Where MLB Baseballs Are Actually Made
Since 1990, every official Major League baseball has been manufactured in Costa Rica.
Not Florida. Also, the factory sits on a quiet stretch of road surrounded by coffee farms and sugar cane fields. In real terms, not New York. A small town called Turrialba, about two hours east of San José, in the central valley. Not the Dominican Republic, where so many players grow up. You'd drive right past it if you didn't know what you were looking for.
Rawlings moved production there from Haiti in 1990, after political instability made the Port-au-Prince operation unreliable. Before Haiti, they were made in Puerto Rico. Before that, the US mainland. The migration followed labor costs, trade policies, and a workforce willing to do work that's repetitive, precise, and surprisingly hard to automate.
The Turrialba factory employs roughly 300 people. That's it. Three hundred people hand-stitch every single baseball used in every Major League game, every spring training game, every playoff game, every World Series. Roughly 2.4 million balls a year. All from one building in a town most baseball fans couldn't find on a map.
Why Costa Rica
Labor is the short answer. But it's not just cheap labor — it's skilled* labor.
Stitching a baseball takes about 10 to 15 minutes per ball when you're good at it. The stitchers in Turrialba have been doing it for decades. Which means they know the tension, the spacing, the feel of the leather. And you can't just hire someone off the street and get MLB consistency. Some are second-generation. The rejection rate for cosmetic flaws is already low; without experienced hands, it would skyrocket.
Costa Rica also offered political stability, a decent infrastructure, and proximity to the US for shipping. But the core process hasn't changed. Rawlings (owned by Newell Brands since 2018, previously by K2 Sports) has invested in the facility over the years — climate control, better lighting, ergonomic workstations. It's still hands, needles, and leather.
The Factory Tour That Doesn't Exist
You can't tour the Rawlings factory in Turrialba. Every shipment is sealed. And security is tight — not because of trade secrets, exactly, but because MLB treats the balls like controlled inventory. So have other writers. In practice, they don't do public tours. But i've asked. This leads to every box is tracked. There have been counterfeit balls showing up in memorabilia markets, and MLB takes that seriously.
What we know comes from the occasional press visit, Rawlings promotional videos, and interviews with former employees. The process looks like this:
- The "pill" — the cork-and-rubber core — arrives from a supplier in the US.
- Machines wind the wool and poly-cotton layers under precise tension.
- The leather covers (horsehide until 1974, then cowhide) are cut in the US, shipped flat, and stamped with the Rawlings logo, the commissioner's signature, and the league designation.
- Stitchers hand-sew the two figure-8 pieces together with 88 inches of waxed red thread. 108 double stitches. Exactly.
- Balls are stamped, inspected, boxed, and shipped to Miami, then distributed to all 30 clubs.
That's the whole operation. That's why three hundred people. One town. Millions of balls.
Want to learn more? We recommend acs award for team innovation established and why does an ice cube melt for further reading.
Why It Matters
You might think: okay, they're made in Costa Rica. So what?
It matters for a few reasons.
First, it matters to the people who make them. In practice, the stitchers in Turrialba take pride in their work. In practice, they know their balls are in the Hall of Fame. They know a ball they stitched might be the one Aaron Judge hits for number 62, or the one a kid catches in the bleachers and keeps forever. That's not nothing.
Second, it matters for quality control. When MLB started seeing weird variance in ball flight — 2015 through 2019, then again in 2021 — the first place investigators looked was the factory. Were the stitches tighter? So was the leather thinner? So was the pill different? Day to day, rawlings opened the doors to MLB's independent consultants. Now, the conclusion: the factory wasn't doing anything different. The variance came from natural material fluctuations and, possibly, how the balls were stored after leaving the factory. But the scrutiny only happened because people knew where* the balls came from.
Third, it matters for the economics of the game. Consider this: with ~900,000 balls used in games each year — plus practice balls, batting practice, spring training, minors — the league spends something like $10–15 million annually on baseballs alone. Rawlings has held it for nearly 50 years. That's a rounding error for a $12 billion industry, but it's still a contract worth fighting for. But mLB pays roughly $7 per ball (the exact number isn't public). No other manufacturer has come close to unseating them.
How the Ball Gets From Turrialba to the Mound
It's not a straight line.
After stitching and inspection in Costa Rica, balls are packed in boxes of 12, sealed in Rawlings-branded cartons, and shipped via air freight to Miami. From there, they go to a Rawlings distribution center in Washington, Missouri — the company's US headquarters — where they're re-inspected, re-boxed, and shipped to each club's equipment manager.
Every team receives a shipment before the season, then top-ups throughout the year. In real terms, the equipment manager rubs each ball with Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud — harvested from a secret spot on a Delaware River tributary in New Jersey — to take the gloss off the leather and give pitchers grip. That mud has been used since the 1930s. So every ball. Here's the thing — every game. Same mud. Same guy's family still collects it.
By the time a pitcher toes the rubber, that ball has traveled 2,000+ miles, passed through three countries, and been handled by a dozen people. And it cost seven bucks.
Common Mistakes / What Most People Get Wrong
Mistake: "They're made in China."
Nope. Rawlings makes some* consumer-grade balls in China — the ones you buy at Dick's Sporting Goods
for the cheap ones you use in the backyard. This leads to the official MLB ball has never been made in China. It's a point of pride in Turrialba.
Mistake: "They're machine-stitched."
This is the big one. The 210 stitches per ball? All of them, on every MLB ball, are done by hand. It's a highly skilled job. The stitchers, predominantly women, are trained for months to achieve a consistent tension. A single ball takes about ten minutes to stitch from start to finish. The machine is only used to cut the leather panels and to apply the initial waxed thread that holds the seams in place before the hand-stitching begins. The final, crucial stitches that create the signature "rose" pattern are purely manual. That's the secret to the ball's flight and control.
Mistake: "The game is too focused on the home run."
While the power surge is real, the ball itself is not a juiced one. The MLB ball is designed to be a stable, consistent object. Its weight (9 to 9.25 ounces) and circumference (9 to 9.25 inches) have been the same since 1973. The perceived changes in offense come from a complex mix of factors: better strength and conditioning, analytics-driven approaches, and shifts in pitching strategy. The ball is the constant, not the variable.
The journey of the baseball is a story of remarkable continuity in a world of constant change. In practice, it is handled by the same mud, touched by the same hands, and subjected to the same rules for decades. That's why in an era of data and disruption, the baseball remains a testament to the enduring power of tradition, craftsmanship, and the simple, perfect act of stitching a sphere. It begins with a cow in a pasture, becomes a carefully crafted object through generations of skill, and then travels a modern logistical path to arrive at the ballpark. It is, quite simply, the heart of the game.
