Soccer balls ⚽️ are made with a bunch of hexagons
Baseballs ⚾️ and Tennis Balls 🎾 have two a rounded hourglass shapes
Basketballs 🏀 have their own weird thing going on
Volleyballs 🏐 have the rectangles
Why aren’t there soccer balls with the volleyball pattern? Why not make a baseball out of hexagons?
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You know the dimples on a golf ball impact how the ball travels, right? So does the stitches on the balls. Plus you also have muscle memory. A ball player learns how to grip the soft ball and masters it. If that ball had different stitches each time he picked it up, he/she would not be able to control it properly. And likewise the batter would not know how to hit it properly either. A consistency is needed for the sport to be consistent.
Part of the reason is that the stitching changes the performance of the ball. So each ball has its “traditional” design and they stick with it. A baseball, for example, heavily depends on aerodynamics and any changes would fundamentally alter how pitches work.
FWIW, the World Cup does introduce a new official ball for each tournament. This causes the expected problems and some balls – such as the 2010 “Jabulani” are heavily criticized for behaving differently than a normal ball.
They all do different things to the way the ball acts. Such as lift, spin and curve.
Footballs are more commonly made of lozenge shapes as well the hexagonal “tango” balls, and have had various designs over the years. As demonstrated in the below link.
https://images.app.goo.gl/JDg4DYTKuxFFdPaG8
Soccer balls haven’t been hexagons and pentagons for a very long time. The iconic, black and white, soccer ball that we all know was only official for a very short time. The image just stuck.
To answer your question with a question somewhat, why would they? 40 million soccer balls are made a year, a whole lot of that is because you can have factories that pump out thousands a day if not more. Changing the design would make it more complicated on them, others have already explained that the changes would effect the players, and for what? Theres not any real benefit to significantly changing the ball design and thered be significant cost so nobody bothers
Great question! Each sport has its own ball design for specific reasons. Soccer balls use hexagons because this shape helps create a rounder ball and makes it easier to kick accurately. Baseballs have a smooth surface for better grip and control when pitching or hitting. Volleyballs have rectangles to help players grip and control the ball during play.
These patterns also affect how the balls behave in the air and on the ground. Changing the design could impact how the ball bounces or rolls, which is crucial for each sport’s gameplay. Sticking to traditional designs helps players know what to expect during a game!
They did actually change this design in a prominent way in soccer. The 2010 world cup used a new ball called the Adidas Jabulani, which boasted eight round panels and a special surface texture designed to improve aerodynamics. The hilarious and unintended consequence of this was that it made the ball’s trajectory really difficult to predict, basically causing it to fly like a knuckleball with every kick. Everyone hated it, it was widely criticized, and led to a lot of extra goals.
Everyone else has mentioned aerodynamics, grips and consistency, and those are all 100% reasons for it.
Another factor people haven’t touched on is that different balls are made for different purposes, and that changes their design. The different purposes have different stresses, different demands, different expected lifespans and all of that results in designs made differently to handle those different expectations out of vastly different materials. The different materials also need to be connected together, which leads to different bonds and stitches, or completely different manufacturing processes. Bowling balls for example have no visible seam because a seam would change the roll down the smooth, oiled alley.
On lifespan, it’s reasonable for a soccer match ball to last long beyond the duration of a single match and will be reused if still meeting the requirements, whilst in baseball, a ball is barely expected to last a half-inning. A pro tennis player may get 7 or so games (less than the average set in a tennis match, maybe an hour or so of play) out of a set of balls.
In baseball and basketball, grip is an important factor. Not just how you grip a ball, but how much grip you have on the ball. The material and stitching impact that. This is less of a concern for tennis and soccer.
A baseball stitched like a soccer ball will behave differently in comparison to a traditionally stitched baseball. This would change how the game is played, which changes how the game is viewed. The people in charge of that, the largest governing bodies for each sport set the rules of what a ball looks like because it’s one of the many ways they can influence how the game is played. Keeping the stitching and look the same is also a concern when it comes to branding, another factor governing bodies look to maintain. A standardised look, a standardised ball for standardised play across the whole of the sport.
For a baseball, a pitcher can throw two different pitches by literally just rotating the ball 90°. A four seam fastball, where four seams rotate of the axis, which flies straight, and it’s generally the fastest pitch. Rotate the ball 90° so instead only two seams rotate over the axis when thrown. This pitch is now called a two seam fastball. It’s almost as fast as the 4seam, but it has some movement to the pitchers arm side. So a right handed pitcher will have the ball move to his right. This is due to air pressure and drag based on how the seams of the ball disrupted the airflow around it. It’s creates a slightly lower pressure on one side of the ball and so the ball moves that direction.
In golf, they have little dimples all over the ball. It was found that those little dimples disrupted the air flow just correctly to help reduce drag and make the ball fly further and straighter.
If a soccer ball isn’t made properly it can have negative effects on gameplay. The ball can move in unintended directions. Go look up the jabulani ball from the south African world cup.
Cricket is super interesting with the balls that it uses too. The main manufacturers are Dukes in the UK (also used in the wiest indies i think) , the Kookaburra in Australia (used by south Africa and nz too and a stack of other countries), and the SG ball in India. While they comply with all of the same dimensions and stuff like that, the two types behave drastically different. The kookaburra is machine stitched and the others are hand stitched so that makes a difference in their durability, whether they swing or not (a good thing), and the consistency between different balls. The balls are so different that it’s a common practice for touring countries to play a few rounds of domestic cricket with the ball of the country they are going to so they can attempt to get used to the differences.
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