Making baseballs for millionaires.

• Author: Weiner, Tim

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...