A baseball yarn

When I was a kid, my father would sometimes hand me a useless golf ball - one with a gash in its side that would render it erratic if put into play. I would sit there with a razor, carving through the hard white outer layer (made of a sap called barata), unwinding the tightly wound rubber "string" (it could sting if the rubber broke and you weren't careful), all to get to the hidden prize at the core: a teeny-tiny little rubber ball (sometimes with a liquid center) that had incredible bounce. Unfortunately, after you made the first wondrous bounce, you were lucky to find that teeny-tiny ball.

When I was carving up the golfball, I was usually sitting there watching a baseball game. 

I would have loved to have had an occasional baseball to similarly dismantle, but even when a baseball got gashed up, it wasn't rendered useless. A torn baseball was wrapped in black electrical tape and kept in play. 

But before the baseball got wrapped, you did get a peek inside and could see that what was under the horsehide and red top stitching there was yarn.

The yarn in the baseball I was looking at back in the early 1960's didn't come from a third-generation-run textile mill in Woonsocket, RI. The Brickle Group has been around for over a hundred years, but they've only been providing yarn for Rawlings for about 15 years. But if I were looking at a slashed up Rawlings-made MLB baseball these days, that yarn would have been Brickle yarn. 

The company’s story is as tightly wound as the product it creates. CEO Max Brickle traces it back to his grandfather, who immigrated to the United States during the pogroms of the early 1900s.

“He was selling rags on the streets of Woonsocket,” Brickle said. “He’d buy stuff for a nickel and sell it for a dime.”

That entrepreneurial spirit carried forward. Today, the company employs about 150 people and plays a behind-the-scenes role in America’s pastime.(Source: WCVB-Chronicle)

Rawlings provides all the baseballs for MLB, and has been doing for nearly 50 years. (Today, MLB owns a minority stake in Rawlings, so the company i probably in no danger of losing their position as sole provider.) I've seen wildly different estimates of how many baseballs MLB puts in play each season, but with spring training, a long season, and playoffs, it's a lot of baseballs. And that means a lot of yarn!

The Brickle Group also produces military berets, blankets, and other extreme cold weather gear, Brickle said. (Source: Boston Globe)

But baseballs are the fun stuff. They're also surprisingly complex. 

Brickle wouldn’t give away any trade secrets about the making of each ball, but he did say that there are four different yarns inside each baseball. 

Even though Woonsocket isn't Massachusetts, I'm always delighted when I read about things that are manufactured anywhere in New England. And to have something integral to baseball made hereabouts...I just loved this baseball yarn. (Plus an excellent immigrant story, I might add.)

And if you're wondering what's underneath those four types of yarn, there's a cork center wrapped in rubber. 

Maybe I'll get me a run of the mill baseball, an old school "safety razor," and carve it up while watching a game. 

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Image Source: Rawlings