Dairy cows get turned into major league baseballs at a Pennsylvania meat processing plant

PHILADELPHIA – Whether you’re watching the Phillies, the Texas Rangers or the Seattle Mariners, the baseballs belted over the center-field wall were likely made from cows that last chewed cud in and around northeastern Pennsylvania.

Dairy cows live a short life on large farms, typically just three to five years. When their milk production drops off, the end is near. Cargill, a beef-processing plant in Wyalusing, Bradford County, takes in nearly 550,000 cows from a 300-mile radius, yearly. Just one of those hides can make about 108 baseballs, though, and with 30 MLB teams using tens of thousands of balls each season, that’s a lot of cows going from the pasture to America’s pastime.

“Our old hide manager used to say that seven out of 10 baseballs in the major league had hide from the facility,” plant manager Brian Emick said recently.

‘Nothing wasted’

The folks at Cargill like to think of beef processing as a circle of life, where no part of a cow is wasted. In the processing world, that’s called rendering byproducts, and it’s how cows become pet food, shoes or a four-seam fastball. Cargill even harvests the cow’s gallstones, for herbal medicine.

“I think it’s considered an aphrodisiac,” Emick said.

The Phillies said they use anywhere from 144 to 180 baseballs between both teams in a single game. Over the season, including batting practice for home and road games, and bullpen sessions for pitchers, the team can use up to 54,000 baseballs.

“Used baseballs are reused for batting practice or defensive drills,” said Kevin Gregg, the team’s vice president of baseball communications.

Gregg said most pitchers are more concerned with the mud used to “scuff” up the baseballs before a game, not the actual construction of the ball. That mud is even more of a local product, dug up in a secret tributary of the Delaware River, in South Jersey.

‘You know in an instant’

Former Phillies pitcher Randy Wolf, who started the first game at Citizens Bank Park 20 years ago, said not all baseballs are the same, even if they’re made in the same place. Baseballs in Arizona and Colorado, where it’s drier, can feel “harder,” he said, while balls in Atlanta or Florida can feel slick.

“I was probably sweating, too,” he said.

Wolf said the balls were perfect in St. Louis.

Some pitchers, Wolf said, will pick up a baseball, get a bad vibe, and immediately ask for a new one. Wolf, who played for more than a half-dozen teams, said he really needed to feel a baseball’s seams, to make his pitches break.

“You wind up holding so many baseballs in your hand, throughout your life, you know in an instant if it feels right,” he said.

Baseballs don’t have a long life in the big leagues: The average ball is replaced after just seven pitches.

The process

You don’t want to know exactly how Holsteins become major league baseballs. At Cargill, it’s a loud and hot process that involves a machine called a “hide puller” among other things.

Cows from Cargill’s plant have the ideal hides, because of the climate.

“The more times a cow spends in cooler weather, the better it is for us,” said Mike York, plant manager at Tennessee Tanning, Co., where the hides go after Cargill. “Our biggest enemy, for baseball leather, is bug bites, from big, biting flies, and things like that. Bug bites could leave marks on the skin and MLB has strict requirements. The harder the winters, the less we have of that.”

David McCullough, Cargill’s director of byproducts, said dairy cows have a thinner hide too, which makes for a better baseball.

“It’s strong but still easy to work with,” he said.

Minnesota-based Cargill inherited the baseball side hustle when it purchased the former Taylor Packing Company in Wyalusing, in 2002. The plant, about 175 miles northeast of the Phillies stadium, processes approximately 1,500 cattle per day there.

Cargill doesn’t allow phones or cameras onto the processing line, but they require knee-high muck boots and protective glasses for visitors. Eventually, the body goes one way, while full hides go the other way.

The hides take a bath in a churning pool of brine, then travel like wet laundry on a clothesline before they’re dropped on an inspection table to get examined for imperfections.

Once down, the cow hides are stacked like linen and shipped to Tennessee Tanning, about 75 miles southeast of Nashville. Each year, Cargill sends 36,000 hides to Tennessee Tanning, which is owned by Rawlings.

“If they miss a truckload of hides, baseball production stops,” a Cargill spokesman said.

At the tannery, York said the fur is trimmed and the hide is tanned and cut into two pieces. From there, the hides are sent to Costa Rica to be sewn at a Rawlings facility, east of San Jose, a long journey for a Pennsylvania dairy cow.

It all comes full circle in South Philly, where fans can catch a Kyle Schwarber foul ball, while eating a Schwarburger that’s made of, well, you know.

Dairy cow hides are stacked and ready to be moved for drying and storage following rendering at the Cargill meat packing plant in Wyalusing, Pa., on April 25. Official MLB baseballs are stitched together in Turrialba, Costa Rica, after the leather is processed in Tullahoma, Tenn. But most of the cow hide comes from butchered dairy cows at the Cargill meat packing plant in Bradford County in Pennsylvania.

A fan holds baseballs looking for an autograph before the Philadelphia Phillies played the New York Mets on Aug. 31, 2019, in Philadelphia.