The "Professional Baseballs Aren't Just Any Baseballs" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Reading another Jack Brubaker "The Scribbler" story that was posted in my local newspaper.  Story was titled "Was source of baseball 'rubbing mud' known here?"  Began with...Dale Good spotted an unusual article, "Soft matter mechanics of baseball's Rubbing Mud," in the Nov. 4 Lancaster newspaper.  He wondered if there is any association between contemporary baseball mud and mud that Bainbridge scientist Samuel Stehman Haldeman discovered in New Jersey in 1839.  Good emailed the authors of a University of Pennsylvania study that proved why Major League Baseball's mud, taken from a secret place in New Jersey, is the best substance to put on new baseballs to make them less slick and easier to grip.  Good, a member of the Haldeman Mansion Preservation Society, has not heard anything from the Penn profs., so he is left wondering.  Haldeman (1812-1880) was a naturalist, philologist and a sometime professor at Penn who lived in a home now being slowly restored in Bainbridge.  He corresponded with many of the great scientists of his day, including Charles Darwin.  In May 1839, Haldeman provided an analysis of marl, or mud, found in the "New Jersey greensand."  It was deposited millions of years ago when the Garden State was under water.  Haldeman described the mud as bluish-white on the surface, light chocolate when fractured, soft and easily broken.  The surface was covered with grains of green sand.  He published these findings in a brief note in the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.  The rubbing mud that the Major Leagues used to allow their pitchers to get a grip on baseballs apparently has perfect proportions of clay and sand.  It also comes from a secret place in New Jersey.  "The mud spreads like face cream, but it grips like sandpaper," said a Penn geophysicist and co-author of the study.  The stuff has been applied to baseballs since 1938.  Since 2022, Major League Baseball has mandated that at least 156 balls get at least a 30-second rub with the mud within a three-hour period before each game.  "This mud works as a superfine abrasive and takes the gloss coating off without doing any type of damage to the leather or laces," said the fellow who harvests the mud from an unknown location and sells it to the Major Leagues. Baseball officials have tried other substances without success.  The Penn study shows why alternatives have struck out.  And, so my explanation of how and why professional league baseballs are so expensive comes to an end.  Have to go and watch another game on TV in a few minutes and see if I can spot one of these balls in use.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.