UPON FURTHER REVIEW: No animals were harmed in this column
Have you ever given much thought on where sports such as baseball, football and golf would be without animals?
Yes, that’s right — I said animals.
Some of you are scratching your heads right now, wondering where I’m going with this. But if you think about it for a minute, the origin of the balls used to play these sports all come from animals.
Let’s start with the golf ball. Golf balls are the king when it comes to sporting projectiles. Nothing soars through the air like a golf ball. Baseballs and footballs become airborne but a golf ball’s performance dwarfs that of any other ball thanks to today’s technology. But the golf ball didn’t start out as an aerodynamically designed, hard cover 300-yard super ball.
The first golf balls were made from wood, which made them pretty easy to make. But the problem was they didn’t travel far — only about 100 yards. Then a group of Scottish scientists figured that if feathers can help make a bird fly, then maybe they could help the golf ball take off.
They started using boiled chicken and goose feathers and wrapped them in leather. The leather and feather ball performed remarkably. In 1836 a drive of 361 yards was recorded at the Old Course in Scotland.
These balls were used for over 200 years. So thanks to the chicken, golf has become one of man’s great games.
Now the old “Pigskin,” or football, is the next ball made from leather.
Originally the bladder of a football was actually the bladder of a dead cow. It was cut out, dried and filled with air, tied off and covered in animal skins. When the football was first used pigskin was the choice to cover the bladder because of its toughness.
The ball used in the very first game was round, like today’s soccer ball. It was tough to carry, and awkward to throw. Then a few years later, it was redesigned and looked more like today’s rugby ball.
It was still hard to throw, but little changed until around 1935, when the football was shortened to between 11 and 11-1/4 inches, and the amount of air was set at 12.5 to 13.5 pounds per square inch. These dimensions remain today, as does the ball’s shape, which has been called a “prolate spheroid” since 1890.
Over the years, the leather has been experimented with and today’s football has a pebble design on the leather to enhance the grip.
Now the cover for a baseball is made out of cowhides. The largest maker of baseballs — Rawlings, which actually owns a plant in Tullahoma — tans the balls to give them their color.
The nucleus of the ball is cork. Then the cork is wound with 121 yards of four-ply blue-gray wool, 45 yards of three-ply white wool and then 150 yards of polyester-cotton blend yarn.
So you see, animals have contributed to sports more than you think. Different types of man-made materials have been tried over the years in making baseballs and footballs, but the only things that have really worked have come from cows, pigs or sheep.
Through the centuries, the golf ball is the only thing man has improved with technology — making it even better than its “feather and leather” predecessor. And now, some even say that technology has gone to far.
Could a return to cow hide and goose feathers be on the horizon?