ALL That it Seams?

The Rawlings baseball made in Costa Rica is kicking up some controversy.

FEW COSTA RICANS CAN NAME THE teams likely to face off in the World Series, yet the country sits front and center in this season's baseball headlines. And it's not due to a surge in local talent, that's for sure.

The question is whether it's all in the balls.

For the past 10 years, the town of Turrialba, tucked in a lush valley 40 miles east of the country's capital, San Jose, has served as the Costa I Rican home to Rawlings Sporting Goods, the U.S. firm with a coveted sports distinction: it's the exclusive provider of major league baseballs. Now it's become the setting for the Great Baseball Conspiracy.

Eyebrows rose as batters started slugging Rawlings baseballs out of major league stadiums at a record pace this season. Everyone from sportswriters to baseball fans to the players themselves began weaving theories about whether the league was "juicing" the balls to draw fans to the nation's ballparks.

At the factory in Costa Rica, workers and supervisors alike insist there's been no change in the way baseballs are made--at least, not since the switch from horsehide to cowhide in 1974.

"The last half of the '90s has been very home-run friendly," concedes Steve Hirdt, executive vice president of Elias Sports Bureau Inc., the official statistician for major league baseball. "Last year, there were 2.28 home runs hit in every Major League game, the highest ever. This year so far, it's 2.63, 15% over last year's record," Hirdt said about halfway through the season.

Still, Hirdt and other industry experts insist that it's not the balls. They cite a combination of other factors, including stronger players, smaller ballparks, aerodynamically designed bats, diluted pitching talent and a smaller strike zone.

Tell that to the fans. They expect Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa to slam away at the plate, but this season's stream of unknowns morphing into overnight heroes has kept the buzz high. At one point, sports forecasters were predicting the season would top last year's by nearly 800 home runs. The fans became so convinced that the balls were bogus that major league executives booked a one-day trip to Costa Rica at the end of May.

The seven-member delegation included Sandy Alderson, major league baseball's executive vice president of baseball operations; Steve Rogers, special assistant to the players association; and Ted Sizemore, a senior vice president at Rawlings. A day after the official visit, the notoriously secretive officials at Rawlings' headquarters in Missouri finally caved into pressure and opened the Costa Rica plant to journalists interested in their own tour of the 50,000-square-foot factory.

"People have been talking about the balls' having a slick feeling this year," acknowledges Rawlings Vice President Doug Kralik, the factory's general manager for the past 11 years. "But if you feel this," he says of the whitened cowhide that gets cut into a figure-eight shape with something akin to a giant cookie cutter, "you'll see that this is a natural tanned leather. Nothing's been added to the surface."

One cowhide yields eight dozen balls, Kralik says. There are variations in the stretch, texture and firmness of leather within the same piece of cowhide, so Rawlings saves the very best for the majors. In the end, what separates the 75,000 dozen balls Costa Rica sends to the pros each year from those sold commercially is esthetics, Kralik says.

Kralik's wife, Diane, who serves as quality-control manager, conducts 17 different quality audits on the balls each week. She contends that 97.5% of all balls manufactured meet tight requirements: they are 9.25 inches in circumference and weigh between five and five and a quarter ounces.

Every baseball starts with a cushioned cork sphere covered with two layers of rubber known as the "pill," which is then wrapped in three layers of woolen yarn and a fourth layer of cotton yarn. Whether on purpose or accidentally, a "juiced" or "lively" ball is one with a more resistant inner core or a ball where the yarn between the core and the leather surface has a tighter weave. After his two-and-a-half-hour tour, major league baseball's Alderson was convinced the balls were not causing the home-run epidemic.

"Baseball is a sport where people keep a lot of stats," Rawlings President Howard Keene notes. "Any time the numbers change a little, people ask why. It's happened before and it will happen again, but the baseball is probably the most consistent thing in the game."

Rawlings also made quick work of the rumor that its balls are machine made. In an assembly area the size of two large gymnasiums, some 500 Costa Ricans bob to their Walkmans while racing against the clock. The average Turrialba worker sews about 150 balls a week. But a sewer with dexterous fingers--one who has mastered the v-stitch--can spin out more than 250. A couple of balls from each day's batch are funneled into a Jugs pitching machine and fired at a piece of ashwood to see if they bounce back at the required 57 miles per hour.

While there was talk of experimenting with the height of the pitcher's mound in the short-season Class A leagues, no one wants to run out and change the game, Alderson says. Besides, except for baseball "purists," those in the industry aren't convinced more home runs are a bad thing. And fans like the excitement.

"In baseball history, there have been several times where the game has changed similarly," Hirdt says. "In the early part of the 20th century, all the scores were very low, 2-1, 3-1. When Babe Ruth came along, he hit a lot of home runs and popularized a new way to play the game. Prom then on, there was less bunting and running and more power hitting."

Rawlings isn't complaining. The company expects to grow by 10% this year, according to Keene. He says the pro baseballs manufactured in Costa Rica account for 20% of the company's total production and net $10 million to $12 million a year along with souvenir-related products. Of this, roughly $300,000 per month stays in Costa Rica.

Including the NCAA, minor and Little League baseballs made in China, Rawlings generated $165 million in sales last year, Keene adds.

Still, the conspiracy theories haven't been put completely to rest--yet. The final word on baseballs will come from an independent study being carried out at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell at the request of major league baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, whose stamped signature guarantees every ball. In a facility dubbed the "Bat Lab" following a major league baseball-funded study two years ago, researchers Jim Sherwood and Larry Fallon search for the truth.

But there are doubts whether they will find anything-that is, unless the Costa Ricans are spiking the balls with some high-potency coffee beans.