Major League Baseball ordered teams to keep their game balls at 70 degrees Farenheit this season:

The commissioner's office is telling teams for the first time that balls must be stored at a uniform temperature after they are delivered from the manufacturer.

"The specifications that Rawlings recommends are a 70 degree temperature and 50 percent humidity," baseball senior vice president Joe Garagiola Jr. said Friday.

It's the Coors effect:

The decision was made following debate generated by the Colorado Rockies' use of a humidor at Coors Field. The ballpark ranked first in the major leagues in scoring in its first eight seasons, starting in 1995, but dropped to second in three of the last four years behind Arlington's Ameriquest Field (2003), Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park (2005) and Kansas City's Kauffman Stadium (2006).

Colorado said in 2002 that it had installed the humidor. The Coors Field scoring average, which peaked at 15.0 runs per game in 1996, dropped to 10.7 last season, the lowest ever, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

There's going to be a meeting of SABR in Denver tomorrow discussing this issue. If any Baseball Musings readers go, feel free to write something up and send it in.

However, what happens when a team is playing in 40 degree weather in April? Is MLB concerned about shrinkage?