Baseball sets standards for baseballs

Baseballs will keep their cool this summer.

The commissioner’s office is telling teams for the first time that balls must be stored at a uniform temperature after they are delivered from the manufacturer.

“The specifications that Rawlings recommends are a 70-degree temperature and 50% humidity,” Joe Garagiola Jr., baseball senior vice president, said Friday.

“We have contacted all 30 of the clubs, and they have all confirmed to us that they will all be storing their baseballs in a temperature-controlled facility. We’re not going to have humidors every place, but every place will be temperature controlled, and so I think there will be a very high degree of uniformity.”

The decision was made following debate generated by the Colorado Rockies’ use of a humidor at Coors Field. The ballpark ranked first in the major leagues in scoring in its first eight seasons, starting in 1995, but dropped to second in three of the last four years behind Arlington’s Ameriquest Field (2003), Cincinnati’s Great American Ball Park (2005) and Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium (2006).

Colorado said in 2002 that it had installed the humidor.