Published Tuesday, July 4, 2006

All-American mud needed to take shine off baseballs

George Washington had more important things to do on Christmas Night, 1776 - such as getting his troops safely cross the Delaware River, ambushing a Hessian garrison in Trenton, N.J., and turning the tide of the Revolutionary War.

But if Washington had stopped on the river bank for a few minutes, this country's founding father might have done something else important.

Discover mud.

Not just any mud, but the perfect baseball-rubbing mud.

Before every major-league and minor-league baseball game, an umpire or a locker-room attendant rubs down several dozen brand-new baseballs with Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, pulled from the Delaware River that Washington and his troops crossed 230 years ago. If done properly, the mud removes the ball's slick, shiny outer coating, allowing pitchers to have a better grip and more control.

The mud hole's exact location is a secret known only by Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud owner Jim Bintliff, a descendant of Blackburne. According to Bintliff, the key is the mud's consistency. It is very fine, like thick chocolate pudding.

"It's a special mud," Bintliff said. "There's a special geological quality to the mud. An average mud would be tough, gritty. It would scratch the leather and make it fuzzy."

Rubbing down a baseball isn't a complicated process, involving nothing more than a cup of water, a tub of mud and little technique, but it's a crucial element to the game.

If too much mud is applied, the ball becomes too dark, making it harder for batters to pick up its spin. If the mud gets into the seams, it can affect the ball's flight characteristics.

Mud from the Delaware River is used to take the shine off new baseballs. DON BURK/The Times-Union

Earlier this season, Suns manager John Shoemaker took over the baseball rubbing duties because he didn't like the way the Southern League's replacement umpires were doing it.

"The first two or three games, they were rubbing the balls up, and some of the balls were coming in really, really dark. So I took it upon myself, along with our clubhouse manager," said Shoemaker, whose Suns open a five-game homestand tonight against - appropriately enough - the Carolina Mudcats. "I was rubbing up six dozen balls at home. I was just trying to do it so we didn't have six dozen balls come out real, real dark. We had that a couple of nights before we started doing it ourselves. It just didn't look right."

Shoemaker isn't the first man to scrutinize mud. That would be Blackburne.

Blackburne was a third-base coach for the Philadelphia Athletics in the late 1930s. At the time, umpires used a combination of water and infield dirt to prepare baseballs, but that mix tended to discolor the leather. According to local legend, Blackburne was mucking around in tributaries on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River when he found a quality of mud that he believed would be perfect.

According to the company's Web site, Blackburne's mud was used by the entire American League soon after. By the 1950s, every major-league team, most minor-league teams and some colleges had it.

Bintliff, who has harvested the mud for 40 years, used to travel to the secret spot by boat, but he recently discovered a land route and now loads about 900 pounds of the muck into his truck during several trips each July.

The mud is "cleaned" and screened, and a secret ingredient is added before it's stored over the summer and fall. Come spring, it's packaged and shipped.

A 32-ounce professional-sized tub of mud, which will last one season, costs $51.75, although an eight-ounce container can be bought for $17.25 on the company's Web site.

Over the years, Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud has been shipped to Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Israel and England. And it was used during the World Baseball Classic.

"It's well-traveled mud," Bintliff said. "I think about that when I'm out there harvesting the mud by myself. I think of all the great players, all the great moments that we've been a part of. It's a part of history."

jason.schneider@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4039

Subscribe to Times-Union

Trending this week:

