Spinning the yarn that goes inside MLB baseballs

The Brickle Group was founded in 1937 by Hyman Brickle. The company is now run by Hyman’s grandson, Max Brickle, who follows in his father’s and his grandfather’s footsteps in the textile business. The company makes a large variety of products including extreme cold weather gloves, blankets for the army, and (a little more relevant to this website), the yarn that goes inside of every official Rawlings MLB baseball.

The Brickle Group has been doing business with Major League Baseball through Rawlings for nearly two decades. While Max Brickle can’t speak about the specifications of MLB yarns, he can say that the specs haven’t really changed in the past fifty years. “They try to keep it that way because they don’t want the ball to impact the game. There is a lot of statistical analysis that goes in the quality checking.” Brickle shares that the emphasis on statistical analysis in the production of MLB yarn has changed how the Brickle Group does business, pushing them to lean into statistical analysis in their problem solving in the production process. “It’s made the consistency of the product better and better, year over year.”

The process of yarn making at The Brickle Group (with no MLB-specific details) consists of blending different fibers (like wool and polyester) and “carding” it (a.k.a running it through brushes so the fibers are laying in the same direction). This creates “roving,” which is the basis of yarn without the “twist” that sets it. The company then checks the weight of the roving, to make sure the size of the yarn will be correct and then brings the roving into a spinning frame, which will twist the yarn and check for thin and thick spots.

After the yarn is created and checked, it is sent through a machine which winds the yarn onto cones and checks again for variation in thickness. If there is variation, the machine cuts that section out and reconnects the uncut bits without tying a knot. It does so by blowing the fiber open and interlocking and then adding new twist.

As for Max Brickle’s personal relationship with baseball, he is a fan of the Boston Red Sox. He also collects baseballs, making sure to purchase each year’s official ball from Rawlings, as well as World Series and special game balls and any ball produced to commemorate when a new stadium opens. Brickle enjoys talking to people at games about how many baseballs are used per game (around six dozen). “I play a game where everybody puts a dollar in the starting persons hands, and if there’s eight people playing you get eight dollars and every time a ball is taken out of play it moves to the next person and goes in a circle. It’s amazing, after one solid inning that money moves around pretty quickly.”

To learn more about The Brickle Group and their work, check out their website here.