Making baseballs for millionaires.

The game of baseball is a pure product of America. The ball itself is another matter.

Every baseball used in the major leagues is made here in Turrialba and the towns in the green hills beyond. They are handcrafted with the precision of a machine by men and women who typically make about $2,750 a year. (A baseball player in the United States makes, on average, about $2.4 million, the Players Association says.)

"It is hard work, and sometimes it messes up your hands, warps your fingers, and hurts your shoulders," says Overly Monge, 37. Temperatures inside the factory can rise to 90 to 95 degrees, he says, and when they do, "we suffocate."

He makes $55 a week after 13 years at the baseball factory, barely above Costa Rica's minimum wage. After he pays for the necessities of life, he has about $2 a day left over for himself, his wife, and his daughter.

But that's better than no work at all, he says. Many of the coffee and sugarcane plantations nearby have collapsed, done in by the forces of globalization. There is only one other factory in Turrialba, population 30,000. Without baseballs, Monge said, life here "would be more like Nicaragua," the poor neighbor to the north.

The workers can each make four balls an hour, painstakingly hand-sewing 108 perfect stitches along the seams. They are paid by the ball--on average about 30 cents apiece. Rawlings Sporting Goods of Missouri, which runs the factory, sells the balls for $14.99 at retail in the United States.

"After I make the first two or three balls each week, they have already paid my salary," Monge said. "Imagine that."

Rawlings has had an exclusive contract to supply the major leagues with baseballs since 1977. The Costa Rica plant makes about 2.2 million balls a year and sells about 1.8 million to the majors. Industry analysts say Rawlings sells about $35 million worth of baseballs a year, about one third of the world market. The company imports the raw materials for its baseballs duty-free into Costa Rica--cores from Batesville, Miss., yarn from Ludlow, Vt. and cowhide from Tullahoma, Tenn.

Rawlings officials say the Costa Rican workforce is well-paid, and that the work is not demanding, but a former company doctor says a third of plant workers experienced carpal-tunnel syndrome, which causes pain and numbness in the hands, and other pains from their work.

The people who stitch the baseballs say they are not unaware of the irony of making a product for some of the wealthiest athletes on earth. "'We sacrifice a for so they can play," says Maribel Alezondo Brenes, 36, who quit her job at the plant on her doctor's orders. "It's an injustice that we kill ourselves to make these balls perfect, and with one home run, they're gone."

Tim Weiner is a New York Times correspondent based in Mexico City.