Mitre Sports says stitching holes shown in HBO doc were ‘enlarged’

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Mitre Sports International, the 198-year British sporting goods manufacturer, knows what its balls look like — and the company claims the soccer balls shown in one shot of a 2008 HBO show were altered.

The holes are too big, lawyers for the company told a federal judge on Tuesday.

Mitre, which is suing HBO for libel, and its legal team believe producers for the HBO show “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” enlarged the holes used for stitching the soccer balls to make it easier for the children to sew them.

Mitre claims HBO staged the event to falsely portray the company as abusing child labor laws.

The company claims it doesn’t use child labor and that the HBO report was wrong.

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But Judge George Daniels objected because the legal team was unable to call an expert on the size of the holes.

The exchange provided a few light moments in an otherwise serious trial.

At one point, the give-and-take between the judge and the lawyers about balls and holes in balls turned to blue balls.

Judge Daniels said that without an expert witness, Mitre’s claims were “pure speculation.”

The judge said the claims only made sense if Mitre’s legal team was trying to suggest the ball shown was brown and that Mitre only sells blue balls.

The conversation then got weirder as the judge suggested Mitre’s lawyers ought to “bring in an expert on blue balls” if that was their argument.