College Baseball: NCAA to use lower profile laces on balls next season (Photo)
By Jack Crosby
As we get set to crown a new national champion in college baseball on Wednesday night as the Virginia Cavaliers and Vanderbilt Commodores finish up their third game of the College World Series Finals, we’re finding out that there is going to be a little bit of a change next season.
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In particular, there is going to be a change to the baseballs that will be used in the field of play as the NCAA will be debuting a ball in which the laces have a bit of a lower profile to them.
NCAA will use a new baseball with lower profile laces next year, new ball on the left pic.twitter.com/QFOVgwGUZi
— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) June 26, 2014
Actually, this change was called back in 2013.
"In an effort to boost offense, the Division I Baseball Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to switch from the raised-seam baseball currently used during the NCAA tournament to a flat-seamed ball, starting in 2015. Conferences won’t be required to use the flat-seamed ball during the regular season, but all of them figure to adopt the new ball in 2015 in order to prepare for the postseason."
Now whether or not this change will affect the way the ball comes off the bat in postseason play remains to be seen, but I’m sure there are a lot of people hoping that it does, given the lack of balls that we’ve seen fly out of the park this year.