A 45-gallon rubber barrel sits in a cluttered garage along the Jersey Shore, filled waist-high with what looks like the world’s least appetizing chocolate pudding. It is nothing more than icky, gooey, viscous, gelatinous mud.
Ah, but what mud. The mud that dreams are made of.
This particular mud, hauled in buckets by one man from a secret spot along a New Jersey riverbank, is singular in its ability to cut the slippery sheen of a new baseball and provide a firm grip for the pitcher hurling it at life-threatening speed toward another human standing just 60 feet and six inches away.
Tubs of the substance are found at every major league ballpark. It is rubbed into every one of the 144 to 180 balls used in every one of the 2,430 major league games played in a season, as well as those played in the postseason. The mudding of a “pearl” — a pristine ball right out of the box — has been baseball custom for most of the last century, ever since a journeyman named Lena Blackburne presented the mud as an alternative to tobacco spit and infield dirt, which tended to turn the ball into an overripe plum.
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Consider what this means: That Major League Baseball — a multi-billion-dollar enterprise applying science and analytics to nearly every aspect of the game — ultimately depends on some geographically specific muck collected by a retiree with a gray ponytail, blurry arm tattoos and a flat-edged shovel.
Ima“Within the last six weeks, I’ve shipped to the Diamondbacks, the Rangers and the Blue Jays,” the mud man, Jim Bintliff, said recently, as he lingered protectively beside his garaged barrel of goop.
But M.L.B. executives do not exactly get all misty-eyed over the whimsical tradition of what is called Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, which they say is too often inconsistently applied. In their quest to make balls more consistent — and the game more equitable — they have tried to come up with a substitute, even assigning chemists and engineers to develop a ball with the desired feel.
The score so far:
Lena Blackburne: 1
Major League Baseball: 0
Glen Caplin, an M.L.B. spokesman, said that “pre-tack baseballs” are continuing to be tested in the minor leagues. But the reviews have been mixed.
“If you change one property of a baseball, you sacrifice something,” Caplin said. “The sound off the bat was different. The ball felt softer. The bar to change a ball is very high.”
Still, he said, “It’s an ongoing project.”
Bintliff knows the game isn’t over. He said that baseball’s apparent efforts to displace him and his mud used to disrupt his sleep. Now, he said, he’s become more philosophical.
“If they stopped ordering, I’d be more upset by the end of the tradition, not my bottom line,” he said, standing in his garage in red shorts and white high-top Chuck Taylor sneakers. “If they don’t want the mud, they don’t have to buy it.”
The tradition began with Russell Blackburne, a.k.a. Lena, a feisty, weak-hitting infielder who banged around the major leagues in the 1910s before settling in as a major-league coach and manager. A lifer, seen in black-and-white photos beside the likes of Ty Cobb and Connie Mack.
He now had a side job. After a while, every major and minor league team was using what sometimes came to be called “Mississippi mud” — though “mysterious” would have been more apt than Mississippi.
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Before Blackburne died at 81 in 1968, he bequeathed the secret spot to an old friend who had joined him in mud harvesting: Bintliff’s grandfather, who left it to Bintliff’s mother and father, who, in 2000, passed it on to Bintliff.
Bintliff, 65, served in the Navy and worked for decades as a printing-press operator, but the mystical mud remained a constant in his life. Even now, he sees himself as he was in 1965, a rail-thin boy loading pails of freshly collected mud into the back of his grandfather’s Chevy Impala.
Over the years, Bintliff and his wife, Joanne, who handles the administrative work, have tinkered with the business model. For example, he used to harvest mud once or twice a year. But expanding their market to scholastic and professional football teams — including more than a few in the National Football League — has required monthly returns to the riverbank.
The fundamental work, though, remains the same, with timing dependent on the tide.
Bintliff will drive his Chevy Silverado pickup 70 miles or so to the secret spot and walk 50 yards through woods. Along with his shovel and buckets, he will have a machete for any overgrowth and a few fibs for any inquisitors. The mud does miracles for his garden, he might say.
Then back to his Jersey Shore home. The drive takes longer than the harvest.
For the next four weeks, Bintliff will strain the mud into the rubber barrel, skim the river water rising to the top, use plenty of tap water to eliminate odor, apply a “proprietary treatment” he declines to describe — and let the stuff settle.
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Continue reading the main story
Ah, but what mud. The mud that dreams are made of.
This particular mud, hauled in buckets by one man from a secret spot along a New Jersey riverbank, is singular in its ability to cut the slippery sheen of a new baseball and provide a firm grip for the pitcher hurling it at life-threatening speed toward another human standing just 60 feet and six inches away.
Tubs of the substance are found at every major league ballpark. It is rubbed into every one of the 144 to 180 balls used in every one of the 2,430 major league games played in a season, as well as those played in the postseason. The mudding of a “pearl” — a pristine ball right out of the box — has been baseball custom for most of the last century, ever since a journeyman named Lena Blackburne presented the mud as an alternative to tobacco spit and infield dirt, which tended to turn the ball into an overripe plum.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Consider what this means: That Major League Baseball — a multi-billion-dollar enterprise applying science and analytics to nearly every aspect of the game — ultimately depends on some geographically specific muck collected by a retiree with a gray ponytail, blurry arm tattoos and a flat-edged shovel.
Ima“Within the last six weeks, I’ve shipped to the Diamondbacks, the Rangers and the Blue Jays,” the mud man, Jim Bintliff, said recently, as he lingered protectively beside his garaged barrel of goop.
But M.L.B. executives do not exactly get all misty-eyed over the whimsical tradition of what is called Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, which they say is too often inconsistently applied. In their quest to make balls more consistent — and the game more equitable — they have tried to come up with a substitute, even assigning chemists and engineers to develop a ball with the desired feel.
The score so far:
Lena Blackburne: 1
Major League Baseball: 0
Glen Caplin, an M.L.B. spokesman, said that “pre-tack baseballs” are continuing to be tested in the minor leagues. But the reviews have been mixed.
“If you change one property of a baseball, you sacrifice something,” Caplin said. “The sound off the bat was different. The ball felt softer. The bar to change a ball is very high.”
Still, he said, “It’s an ongoing project.”
Bintliff knows the game isn’t over. He said that baseball’s apparent efforts to displace him and his mud used to disrupt his sleep. Now, he said, he’s become more philosophical.
“If they stopped ordering, I’d be more upset by the end of the tradition, not my bottom line,” he said, standing in his garage in red shorts and white high-top Chuck Taylor sneakers. “If they don’t want the mud, they don’t have to buy it.”
The tradition began with Russell Blackburne, a.k.a. Lena, a feisty, weak-hitting infielder who banged around the major leagues in the 1910s before settling in as a major-league coach and manager. A lifer, seen in black-and-white photos beside the likes of Ty Cobb and Connie Mack.
While coaching third base for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1938, he heard an umpire complain about the struggle to prepare brand-new balls for use. Blackburne experimented with mud from a Delaware River tributary, not far from his New Jersey home, and found that it de-glossed the ball while mostly maintaining its whiteness.He now had a side job. After a while, every major and minor league team was using what sometimes came to be called “Mississippi mud” — though “mysterious” would have been more apt than Mississippi.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Before Blackburne died at 81 in 1968, he bequeathed the secret spot to an old friend who had joined him in mud harvesting: Bintliff’s grandfather, who left it to Bintliff’s mother and father, who, in 2000, passed it on to Bintliff.
Bintliff, 65, served in the Navy and worked for decades as a printing-press operator, but the mystical mud remained a constant in his life. Even now, he sees himself as he was in 1965, a rail-thin boy loading pails of freshly collected mud into the back of his grandfather’s Chevy Impala.
Over the years, Bintliff and his wife, Joanne, who handles the administrative work, have tinkered with the business model. For example, he used to harvest mud once or twice a year. But expanding their market to scholastic and professional football teams — including more than a few in the National Football League — has required monthly returns to the riverbank.
The fundamental work, though, remains the same, with timing dependent on the tide.
Bintliff will drive his Chevy Silverado pickup 70 miles or so to the secret spot and walk 50 yards through woods. Along with his shovel and buckets, he will have a machete for any overgrowth and a few fibs for any inquisitors. The mud does miracles for his garden, he might say.
Then back to his Jersey Shore home. The drive takes longer than the harvest.
For the next four weeks, Bintliff will strain the mud into the rubber barrel, skim the river water rising to the top, use plenty of tap water to eliminate odor, apply a “proprietary treatment” he declines to describe — and let the stuff settle.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
He’s Baseball’s Only Mud Supplier. It’s a Job He May Soon Lose.
Jim Bintliff collects the Delaware River mud that is smeared on Major League baseballs to make them less slippery. But that tradition is in jeopardy.
www.nytimes.com