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COSTA RICA
Made in Costa
Rica: U.S. Major League baseballs
By Leslie Josephs
TURRIALBA, Costa Rica (Reuters) - The
average baseball is only used for a few
pitches in the U.S. Major Leagues, but for
the Costa Ricans who make them each ball is
the result of hours of painstaking stitching
by hand.
For 10 hours a day, workers at the world's
only factory authorized to supply Major
League Baseball, in the town of Turrialba in
central Costa Rica, sit at desks yanking
strands of waxy red fiber to form each
baseball's 108 stitches.
In professional games the balls quickly
become too dirty and scuffed by bats to use,
or get lost in the crowd on a foul ball or
home run. To feed the demand, the factory
turns out as many as 2.4 million baseballs a
year, all assembled by hand.
The cork and rubber cores, Tennessee
Holstein cowhide and gray New Zealand
sheep's wool yarn are shipped tax-free to
the plant where more than 300 workers sit in
neat rows to sew, their arms rhythmically
rising and falling like a rowing team.
The finished balls are boxed up and shipped
to Miami.
Famed for its stability in a turbulent
region, Costa Rica is an economic success
story in Central America, earning money from
eco-tourism, coffee and fruit exports, and
factories making everything from making
microchips to pharmaceuticals.
Manufacturer Rawlings Sporting Goods, which
has an exclusive contract to supply Major
League Baseball until 2013, moved its
factory here from Haiti in the late 1980s,
fleeing the violent aftermath of a
dictatorship in the Caribbean nation.
The workers are glad for the pay in a
depressed farming town with few other jobs,
but few show much interest in baseball in a
country that is much more passionate about
soccer.
"I really don't understand baseball,"
admitted Minor Quesada, who has worked at
the factory for 17 years.
The work is tough and some employees have
shoulder injuries from trying to churn out
too many balls to win bonuses.
They earn a base salary of $1.60 an hour,
slightly above Costa Rica's minimum wage but
a world away from the $3 million average
salary of a U.S. professional baseball
player.
Still, for many in Turrialba it's a good
deal.
"It's pretty hard to find work," said Rocio
Gamboa, 33, who has been stitching baseballs
at the factory for 11 years.
She produces 200 balls a week, and receives
a 52 cent bonus for each ball she completes
above the 156-ball minimum. The major league
balls are sold at retail for $14.99.
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