Major League Baseball requires the home team to have 90 new baseballs on hand for each game, and according to several sources, between five and six dozen balls are used during the course of a game.
What many people do not know, though, is that those game baseballs are never right out of the box, clean and glossy. Every baseball used in a major league baseball game is treated with something called “Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud,” it is the only foreign substance used on a major league baseball. The reason so many balls and that one particular brand of rubbing mud are used has an interesting story.
Russell Aubrey “Lena” Blackburne played professional ball for 8 seasons and over 17 years, primarily with the Chicago White Sox, but also with The Cincinnati Reds, Boston Braves, and Philadelphia A’s. After his playing days, he managed and coached. In the meantime, he discovered the “perfect” substance for taking the shine off new baseballs.
Brand new baseballs are slippery and are difficult for pitchers to grip. By the 1920’s, pitchers had taken to rubbing balls down with a whole manner of substances, and marking them up. This had the tendency to cause erratic motion from the pitched ball and caused a discoloration of it. Since there was no requirement to remove an unfit ball from play, balls would become misshapen throughout the course of the game, further exacerbating the erratic motion.
On August 16, 1920, Ray Chapman was struck in the head by a pitch he apparently hadn’t seen. He was rushed to the hospital and died the next day. This lead Major League baseball to implement rules requiring umpires to replace balls no longer fit for play.
Major League Baseball rule 3.01(c) mandates the umpire ensure that the game’s supply of baseballs are properly rubbed to remove the shine. Rule 3.02 forbids the players from intentionally discoloring or damaging the ball with the substances commonly in use that fateful day in 1920. Essentially, then, baseball made it the umpires’ business to take the shine off and took it out of the hands of players. As an aside, rule 3.01(c) does not mandate the umpire rub the balls down, only that it is their responsibility to ensure the balls are properly rubbed down – most commonly it is a club house attendant who does the actual work of rubbing them down.
Through the 1920’s and 1930’s, though, it was the umpires’ responsibility to apply these substances to baseballs. Now that baseball required “fit” balls to be used in play, this required more balls to be treated. And since the various and assorted substances yielded inconsistent results, the new balls entering the game would behave differently from the one or ones used previous. Besides this, it was dirty work.
Several corporate legends exist as to how Lena came to discover the umpires problem and how he came to set about discovering a solution to it, but by 1938, the American League was using this rubbing mud and it became available to National League teams in the 1950’s, apparently when Mr. Blackburne’s business sense overcame his affinity for the American League.
The Blackburne Rubbing Mud comes from a proprietary location along the Delaware River in New Jersey. According to a Fortune Magazine article, an Army Corps of Engineers analysis revealed a high level of feldspar in the product, which apparently allows the mud to be abrasive enough to remove the shine without actually scratching the leather covering of the ball. The Blackburne Rubbing Mud company is a small operation despite it’s relationship with Major League Baseball – one “professional” 32 oz. can is sufficient enough for an entire baseball season.
REFERENCES:
Michael Cochran, “Professional Baseball’s Magic Mud”
URL: http://bigosports.com/index.php?option=com_
content&task;=view&id;=119&Itemid;=40.
Associated Press reported on Baseball Fever.com,
URL: http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=3642
Wikianswers, URL: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/
How_many_baseballs_are_used_during_a_MLB_game
Wikipedia, Lena Blackburne,
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lena_Blackburne
Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud,
URL: www.baseballrubbingmud.com
