Consistency

I watched a bit of last night's game. I stopped long before the predictable finish. If you LIKE watching lots of strikeouts from both teams, last night was your night to shine. If you think that the Twins no longer have any clutch hitters, last night would be your exhibit A at their trial.

But I have no desire to talk Twins right now. Instead I'd like to talk about consistency standards in major league baseball compared to other sports. Or more specifically, major league BASEBALLS compared to the balls used in golf.

Baseball has extremely defined standards about the production of THEIR baseballs, from how they are manufactured all the way to the conditions in which they are stored before they are used as game balls. They do that to make sure that every home run leaving their ballparks, for all practical purposes, has an identical ball being used. No one is going to break the all-time home run record with "new and improved" balls.

Let's switch to golf as a different example. Though all official balls are tested, none have to be identical. They only have to fall into a "range of distance" based on testing. They do this because many golfers use the ball of their sponsors and all sponsors (brands) manufacture balls to their OWN standards.

It gets even better for the weekend duffer. You can actually use clubs and balls that are banned by the PGA if you want a driving distance advantage over your friends.

Most golfers know this, but recently someone cut some golf balls in half just to SEE if they could notice any real difference in the way balls look inside.

The following picture is the result.

It makes me appreciate the standards of Major League Baseball so much more.