Get Your Balls Out Of That Humidor!

Although that sounds like the punch-line of the world’s strangest dirty joke, today’s headline is no laughing matter in Oakland, California. This report comes by way of Hal McCoy of Cox News Service and Scott Miller of CBS Sportsline

Colorado Rockies Baseball Logo For the last five years, a humidor at Coors Field has kept baseballs in a 70-degree and 50 percent humidity environment, which didn’t help Oakland’s visit to Coors last week.

The Athletics were shut out twice in a row, prompting catcher Jason Kendall to say, “I feel there should be an investigation of the humidor.”

Does he think the Rockies are storing contraband Cuban cigars in it?

Well, humidors to store baseballs may soon come to a ballpark near you.

Major League Baseball is considering the use of humidors in more parks, according to Jimmie Lee Solomon, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations and humidor guru. “This is the wave of the future. We will talk about putting humidors in other major-league parks at our operations meetings. The Rockies are ahead of the times.”

Rawlings stores its manufactured baseballs in Missouri at 70 degrees and 50 percent humidity, along with a few boxes of executive cigars.

Why a humidor?

To combat a problem that once plagued George Costanza, in an entirely different way.

The problem is shrinkage. And this is a “rest of the story” that you’re not likely to hear from Paul Harvey.

More after the jump.

At the beginning of every season, the Rockies would order their annual huge shipments of baseballs. And as those baseballs sat there waiting to be called into service, they would slowly shrivel up like bags of dried fruit.

“You put a hot baseball into play at 5,100 feet above sea level, ” says Rockies manager Clint Hurdle, “You do that, and you’re looking at a whole bunch of 14-12 games that are harder to sit through than Munich.

Why?

Basic physics.

Dry, shrunken balls are harder than regular balls and they fly farther when hit. They also throw straighter, whether you want them to or not.

“Ever try to make a golf ball curve?” said Rockies pitcher Jason Jennings, who started the first seven games of his career in the pre-humidor conditions. “You can’t do it.”

Just as recipes call for different baking times at different altitudes, the Rockies think they’ve found the recipe to health and happiness at home. Not that they’re looking for a home-field advantage — remember, this aids opposing pitchers, too. They simply had reached the point where they were desperate to dissolve their disparate patterns in home and road games.

Who knew baseballs are as sensitive as flour and eggs?

So, the Colorado Rockies took steps to ensure that shrinkage is no longer a problem when it comes to their balls. They installed their very own humidor to store baseballs at Coors Field following the 2001 season and were promptely pegged as one of the wackiest franchises in the game for that bit of ingenuity. Now, they seem to be crazy like foxes.

In 23 home games so far this season in Denver, the Rockies and their opponents are averaging 8.78 runs per game and 1.65 home runs per game.

Both of those figures are off 20 percent from 2005 numbers.

And compared to the pre-humidor Coors seasons between 1995-2001, when the Rockies and their opponents averaged 13.83 runs per game and 3.2 home runs per game, the changes are positively mind-boggling.

What started as a top-secret experiment for the 2002 season — San Diego president Sandy Alderson, then working in the commissioner’s office, flew into a rage when he first heard about it and sent an investigator west on the next plane out — now is embraced as a great equalizer.

And over the past five seasons, through trial and error, the Rockies think they have mastered how to use it as well. Following the All-Star break last season, they began employing a rotation system in which the first baseballs into the humidor are the last ones removed — thus increasing the odds that the baseball will be true.

The humidor is simply a converted room down one of the tunnels off of the Colorado clubhouse, but from hearing players talk, it has all of the mystery and intrigue of Al Capone’s secret vault.

“I never saw it,” the Cardinals’ Miles says. “The joke last year was that not only were we using the humidor, but we were keeping the balls in a big bucket of water in there.”

Says Jennings: “I know where it is. I’ve never been in it. It’s kind of our own secret cave back there. It’s not like it’s secured by guards with 18 different entry ways. It’s kind of a mystery. Some people are iffy about it.”

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Far fewer now, however, than when word of the Rockies’ experiment first leaked five seasons ago.

Where the club once refused to talk about it, now the manager and others are openly applauding the effects of the humidor.

Shrinkage now is a problem of the past.

Now, keeping baseballs at a controlled temperature and 50% relative humidity may improve the way they play and make them harder to hit out of the park…but those conditions aren’t going to do even a cheap box of stogies any good.

As any seasoned aficionado knows, 50% relative humidity may be life-savingly moist for baseballs but it is a slow, dry death for fine cigars. Cigars should be stored at a relative humidity of between 65 and 70% on average — with most authorities recommending the higher end of that range.

So, if the Rockies tucked away any expensive boxes of puros in that hidden humidor cave along with their baseballs at the beginning of the season, they are not going to be in smokable condition for any end of the season celebrations. The team is going to learn the hard way that what’s best for your sticks isn’t necessarily best for your…

…well, enough said. You can fill in the end of this story yourself.

Posted on Tuesday, June 27th, 2006 at 9:00 am.