The "Was The Source Of Baseball "Rubbing Mud" Known In Lancaster and Nearby Philadelphia? Story

It was an ordinary day.  Sunday, and my morning paper was standing against my front door, just as it always is on an early Sunday morning.   Opened the "LOCAL" section and was greeted with an article by writer Jack Brubaker, aka "The Scribbler."  Story was titled "Was source of baseball 'rubbing mud' known here?"  Jack is my favorite Lancaster Newspaper writer whose stories always tend to bring life to his stories.  I just knew I was going to enjoy his story about baseball and mud!  His story began with..."Dale Good spotted an unusual article, "Soft matter mechanics of baseball's Rubbing Mud," in the Nov. 4 LNP.  Jack went on to tell the story that I was waiting to read when I opened my front door this morning.  Dale wondered if there is any association between contemporary baseball mud and mud that Bainbridge scientist Samuel Stehman Harman discovered in New Jersey in 1939.  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 then less slick and easier to grip.  Good, a member of the Haldeman Mansion Preservation Society, has not heard anything from the Penn professors, so he is left wondering.  Haldeman was a naturalist, philologist and a sometime professor at Penn who lived in a home now being slowly restored in Bainbidge.  He corresponded with many of the great scientists of his day, including Charles Darwin.  In May of 1939, 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 the findings in a brie note on the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.  The rubbing mud that the Major Leagues use to allow their pitchers to get a grip on baseballs apparently has perfect proportions of clay and sand.  It also comes from New Jersey.  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 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 th fellow who harvests the mud from an unknown location and sells it to Major Leagues.  Many years ago my oldest son pitched for the Villanova University's baseball team and told me about the special baseballs that their coach knew about and obtained that were so much easier to grip, thus could be thrown harder and with more of a curve to them.  They certainly helped him when he pitched on days that we went to see him pitch!  I'm sure it was well-known long before he arrived at Villanova!     Baseball officials have tried other substances without success.  The Penn study shows why alternatives have struck out!!  So...there really is something to the story that the ball can be doctored to help the pitcher throw it with more curve and perhaps better velocity.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.