Why do spherical sports balls have different stitch patterns for each sport? Why don’t they mix it up?

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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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11 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

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