THE OPENING LINE

Monday, July 31, 2006 | 7:25 a.m.

I was sitting at my desk trying to remember the last time the Kansas City Royals were any good, when Sam Morris, a Sun photographer, interrupted my John Mayberry flashback by lobbing a baseball my way.

It was an official Pacific Coast League baseball that had rolled into his station during a 51s game.

He asked me to check the ball for a foreign substance.

There was no evidence of Vaseline. Not the slightest hint of Slippery Elm, or whatever Gaylord Perry used to massage a baseball.

Sam told me to flip the ball around, away from the Rawlings logo and the signature of Branch B. Rickey, the PCL president.

"Don't you see it?" he asked.

At first, I didn't see it. But upon closer inspection, I noticed a dab of faint blue ink below the second seam, probably about the spot where Chad Billingsley placed his fingers before cutting loose with one of those 95-mph rising fastballs that were his ticket to Los Angeles.

Squinting, I could see the dab of blue ink actually formed a minuscule word.

CHINA. As in "Made In," although those two words were left off the ball, as if to disguise that it was manufactured in some faraway land where they've never heard of Yankee Stadium or hitting the cutoff man or sluggers who inject themselves with witches' brew.

Sam thought it strange that the baseball used for the American Pastime was made in China. So did I. I thought it was still made in Haiti.

Actually, baseballs haven't been made in Haiti since the late 1980s, when the regime of president Jean Claude Duvalier - aka Baby Doc - was deposed, causing social and economic unrest. Rawlings moved its baseball manufacturing business to Costa Rica, where major league balls are still made by hand.

Virtually every other baseball is now made in China because labor is even cheaper there than in Costa Rica. It's six times less costly to make a baseball in Asia than it is in America.

The only reason major league baseballs aren't made in China is because Major League Baseball is fearful that even a small change in the way a baseball is manufactured could compromise its sacred records.

That must have been before BALCO.

"That's what China does," said Las Vegas 51s president Don Logan. "We go through 700 dozen balls a year, and we're one of 160 minor league franchises. Do the math. That's a big industry."

So there you are, Sam.

Let's just hope they don't learn how to bake apple pie in Beijing.

THIS WEEK'S BEST BET

USA Basketball vs. Puerto Rico, 8 p.m. Thursday, Thomas & Mack Center

The NBA multimillionaires try to exact revenge against our neighbors from the Caribbean. Revenge? Against Puerto Rico? Yup. P.R. won by 19 the last time these teams met, in the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

TICKETS: $12-$75

ON THE WEB: www.unlvtickets.com

ALSO WORTH A LOOK

Los Angeles Amazons at Las Vegas Showgirlz, 7 p.m. Saturday, Valley High School

Don't be fooled by the long hair. That's really not Troy Polamalu at the line of scrimmage, just a bunch of women's pro football players who fancy his hairdo.

TICKETS: $3-$8

ON THE WEB: www.lvshowgirlz.com

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