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Postby mudman » February 5th, 2008, 7:51 pm

At a Small Ohio Factory, Leather and Laces Mesh

J. D. Pooley for The New York Times
Chrissie Oakes lacing a football. When she gets to watch a game, she says, "You can go
around saying, 'Maybe I did that one.' "




Multimedia
Slide Show
The Game Ball





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February 2, 2008
At a Small Ohio Factory, Leather and Laces Mesh
By KATIE THOMAS
ADA, Ohio — The calls come in every year, right before the N.F.L.'s conference championship games, and when they do, Peg Price tries not to laugh.

"Peg," her friends say, their voices conspiratorial, "can you tell me which teams are going on the Super Bowl balls?"

Price and her 150 co-workers at the Wilson Sporting Goods football factory might know a lot of things. They know how to shave leather thin enough so that the ball will sail through the air, and how to steam a football until it is soft enough to turn. They know how to lace 200 balls in a single day. But even they can't divine the future.

Such is the legend of Wilson factory workers in this town of 5,500 in rural Ohio, the birthplace of every football thrown in the Super Bowl since 1969.

"The people at church come up and talk to me about it all the time," said Glenn Hanson, a lockstitch sewer who has worked at the factory for 35 years. They ask, "Are those your balls that they're using?" He answers, " 'Yeah, I probably sewed them.' And they get a pretty big thrill out of it."

The N.F.L. is the only major sports league whose balls are manufactured in the United States. World Series baseballs come from a factory in Costa Rica. Basketballs in the N.B.A. finals first bounced on the floors of factories in China.

"I think it's really kind of cool that it's an American sport and the product is made in America, too," said Daniel Riegle, the plant manager.

The footballs get their start on the backs of cows taken from feedlots in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. Riegle said he preferred young, lean steers over fat dairy cows because their leather did not stretch as much. By the time the cowhides arrive in Ada, they have been dyed brown and stamped with the familiar football stubble.

Nothing is automated on the factory floor, which is roughly the size of a big-box store. Sewing machines rattle and let out puffs of smoke; hydraulic stampers hiss and sigh. Some of the machines are more than 30 years old. Men with massive hands rock back and forth, "turning" newly sewn footballs right-side-in with startling grace. Women lace the balls by hand, fingers flying as they pass the time listening to Kid Rock and Pink on their MP3 players. The place smells like leather and a little bit of grease.

In addition to the Super Bowl balls, the factory also manufactures official game balls for the N.C.A.A. and for dozens of high schools, as well as leather footballs for retail sale at major sporting goods stores. The plant produces 4,000 balls a day, and 700,000 a year. Wilson's less expensive, synthetic footballs are made overseas.

The factory workers' day begins just before 5 a.m., when almost every headlight in town points to the Wilson parking lot. One morning last week, the cars crunched into the snow-covered lot and the workers tumbled out, clutching thermoses and lunchboxes as they made their way in darkness toward the factory door. Minutes later, they yawned a bit as they returned to the work they had left the day before.

Workers are paid by the piece and belong to a union. Wilson would not say how much the employees earned, but several employees said they made a good wage for the area. Husbands and wives work alongside each other. So do mothers and daughters. The average employee has worked at the plant for 20 years, Riegle said.

Many have been there longer. Price has worked at the factory for 42 years — as long as there has been a Super Bowl, she notes with pride. Her husband, Dick Price, has worked at Wilson for 45 years.

Wilson became the official manufacturer of the N.F.L. football in 1941, and opened the Ada plant in 1955. For the first three years of the Super Bowl, high-end game balls were manufactured in a factory in Chicago. Production switched to Ada in 1969.

There is something special about working in the Wilson factory, many of the workers say, not least because Ada is a football town. The Ada Bulldogs made it to the Ohio high school football playoffs last year, and most of the workers are fans of either the Cleveland Browns or the Cincinnati Bengals, with a few Pittsburgh Steelers fans mixed in. Working at Wilson is a job, they said, but it is different from making rubber bands or ball bearings.

Chrissie Oakes loves football but rarely stays up to watch it because she has to get up so early. Oakes, 35, has worked at the factory for 12 years. She and her mother, Jackie Oakes, are lacers. When she does watch a game, she said: "You can go around saying, 'Maybe I did that one.' Or I'll tell Mom, I'll say, 'You could have done that one.' It's everybody's ball."

Because the Super Bowl game balls have the names of the two teams stamped on the side, Riegle and a handful of employees watch the conference championships at the factory, waiting for the moment that the last game has ended. As Riegle watched Lawrence Tynes kick the winning field goal in overtime on Jan. 20, he said, he felt pride that the ball performed so well, sailing 47 yards in sub-zero temperatures. Then he felt relief — finally, he said, they could get to work. Two days later, more than 100 official Super Bowl footballs were ready to ship to Glendale, Ariz.

Riegle, a 27-year employee of the factory, said reporters who visited the plant sometimes came looking for a new twist on the story of Ada. There is no twist, Riegle said. Then he enunciated each word clearly and slowly: "We ... just ... make ... footballs."

Except for a few minor adjustments, he said, the Wilson football made in Ada, Ohio, is pretty much the same as it has always been. And that is the point.

"If a record field goal is kicked in the Super Bowl, we want it to be the same ball that was kicked in the '50s, in the '60s," he said. "So we're trying to make sure that the integrity of the game remains. The biggest thing we want is consistency."
mudman
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hmmmm ....

Postby Cowboy7130 » February 5th, 2008, 11:30 pm

Now, didn't I read somewhere on this forum that THAT particular Ada, OH, plant was where Wilson used to make most of their gloves and mitts?? :?
Yes, I still have my first glove.
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Cowboy7130
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Postby BretMan » February 6th, 2008, 12:43 am

This is the exact same location where the Ohio-Kentucky (OK) glove company made gloves for about 20 years before they were aquired by Wilson in 1954.

Wilson manufactured their gloves in either Ada or their Chicago plants. They continued to market a separate line of gloves under the Sonnett brand name, which had been started earlier by OK. Bill Sonnett was the founder of The OK Manufacturing Company. Glove production continued there until the mid-60's.

Since then, Wilson has continued to run the plant as a football-only operation.
Click to Visit >> The Glove Shop On-Line
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