As a result, Molitor contributions to sporting goods read like a laundry list of the latest and best in the industry, often achieved in spite of the doubts of others in the field. The Top Flite golf ball, which includes his namesake, the Molitor; the optic yellow tennis ball; the cowhide baseball; aluminum and composite tennis racquets; and other innovations in skiing and softball equipment originated through engineering pioneered by the 1942 TSC CE graduate.

He came to TSC by way of New York, an inquisitive boy with a love for Erector sets, chemistry sets, and model airplanes. Building was his passion, and the rewards lay in the end product. TSC’s recommendation as a top engineering school piqued his interest, and he enrolled as a mechanical engineering major, only to discover “I didn’t like rivets and boilers.” He switched to chemical engineering, and a technical star was born to Spalding Sports and the sporting world.

An early career in rubber products paved the way to his sporting goods career. Recruited by Uniroyal U.S. Rubber right out of school, he received a good scolding from his new employer for attempting to enlist in the Navy to do his part in the war effort. “They said, ‘You can do more here,’ and they made sure I was turned down,” he said.

So he did his part at home, making fittings for connectors on aircraft fuel tanks. After the war, he went to work for Sun Rubber in Ohio as a chemist, where he received his introduction to toys and earned his first patent. His rotational casting machine revolutionized the making of rubber and plastic basketballs, footballs, and other toys. After a stint at Buer and Black in Chicago and another back at Sun Rubber, he joined Spalding as the head of its technical department.

Forty-three years of introducing revolutionary sporting goods followed with the company. Many times, working with chemistry and physics proved easier than getting others to buy into his ideas.

“I was vice president of research and development worldwide and wanted a golf ball that wouldn’t cut and age and would be easier and more profitable to make. My marketing people didn’t think it would sell, but after a year or so, it really took off,” he said, unconsciously using a fitting metaphor for the Top Flite ball.

His skill in developing compounds never used before produced the Top Flite. Until Molitor entered the scene, golf balls were rubber thread wound around a small core with a cover molded to it. “The problem was, as time passed, the thread would relax, and you’d lose the stored energy, and the cover also took away velocity,” he said. The cover also cut easily, he said. He developed a polymer blended with rubber and cured with peroxide for the solid core and then designed an injection-molded cover. “There was no more need for all those previous steps,” he said. “You just put the core in the injection-molded cover.”

The golf ball technology figures high on the list of accomplishments of which he is most proud, along with his work in rotation-casting products. He holds 28 patents in product design and cost reduction.

He has met and consulted with sports greats like basketball’s Larry Bird and Shaquille O’Neal, soccer’s Pele, baseball’s Tom Seaver, football’s Fran Tarkington, and golf’s Johnny Miller. But consulting with now-retired golf pros, like Bobby Jones, yielded the best information on the components for a more playable ball. “He was a great help with Spalding,” he said. Of the golfing greats in general, “I was amazed at their skills and ability to overcome obstacles,” he said.

He overcame a few of his own. “I picked the experts’ brains and overcame the brain blocks of others on the improvements that could be made,” he said, citing a line from a poem he likes, “They said It Couldn’t Be Done”—“He stayed with it, and what couldn’t be done was done.”