PHILADELPHIA — Whether you’re watching the Phillies, the Texas Rangers or the Seattle Mariners, the baseballs belted over the center-field wall were likely made from cows that last chewed cud in and around Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Dairy cows live a short life on large farms, typically just three to five years. When their milk production drops off, the end is near. Cargill, a beef-processing plant in Wyalusing, Bradford County, takes in nearly 550,000 cows from a 300-mile radius, yearly. Just one of those hides can make about 108 baseballs, though, and with 30 MLB teams using tens of thousands of balls each season, that’s a lot of cows going from the pasture to America’s pastime.

“Our old hide manager used to say that seven out of 10 baseballs in the major league had hide from the facility,” plant manager Brian Emick said recently.

‘Nothing wasted’

The folks at Cargill like to think of beef processing as a circle of life, where no part of a cow is wasted. In the processing world, that’s called rendering byproducts, and it’s how cows become pet food, shoes, or a four-seam fastball. Cargill even harvests the cow’s gallstones, for herbal medicine.

“I think it’s considered an aphrodisiac,” Emick said.

The Phillies said they use anywhere from 144 to 180 baseballs between both teams in a single game. Over the season, including batting practice for home and road games, and bullpen sessions for pitchers, the team can use up to 54,000 baseballs.

“Used baseballs are reused for batting practice or defensive drills,” said Kevin Gregg, the team’s vice president of baseball communications.

Gregg said most pitchers are more concerned with the mud used to “scuff” up the baseballs before a game, not the actual construction of the ball. That mud is even more of a local product, dug up in a secret tributary of the Delaware River, in South Jersey.

‘You know in an instant’

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