At a dinner party over the break, the husbands retired to the living room after the meal and sat in front of a cozy fire while the wives continued chatting in the dining room.
The conversation amongst the men turned to baseball. We discussed the high price of ball park tickets (which are getting higher in NY with new stadiums), and the unfairness of it all. Even people who earn a good income can feel stretched by what it costs to take the family to see a game these days.
At some point our host brought up the topic of Blackburne mud. Others seemed to know what this was. I am not the biggest baseball fan, and had never heard of it.
As Paul, our host explained, it is an exclusive kind of mud that they use in major league baseball to condition the playing balls, which otherwise would be too bright and shiny from the new leather.
Paul became very animated while explaining all this, and went and fetched some Web pages he had printed on the topic. He started reading and I quickly became transfixed by the story.
It was about one outfit that is apparently the primary source of rubbing mud for Major League baseball. "What," you ask. Why was this particular brand of mud so special? And what was the reason to rub baseballs in mud again? Of course, I had the same questions.
I am sure I was softened up by the great food, drink and warm company. Perhaps the fact that I had watched There Will be Blood – another "turning mud into riches" story (in that case the mud foretold the presence of oil burbling beneath the surface of the land) – influenced me and contributed to my interest in this story.
But damn if the copy he read from the company's website did not make me want to go out, buy some mud and subscribe to a Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud IPO.
I smelled a great story and blogging topic. When I got home, I looked it up and saw that others have been there first (see this CS Monitor article – The Dirt on Baseball – from 2005). It sure is not easy to be the first to write about interesting stories these days.
Anyway, I know that readers of this blog include marketers and copywriters, so I thought that I would share it anyway, and include this link and some excerpts of great marketing copy on the subject (their text is in italics below).
Enjoy!
P.S. After reading from the Web pages and answering my questions, Paul scurried around and found two baseballs. One was spanking new and the other had been treated with Blackburne mud. Indeed, the former looked bleached white, kind of cheap and hard to handle. The second had a rich hue and conditioned skin – of course this one had been treated with the mud.
How it All Began
Any knowledgeable baseball
fan will tell you that the big league baseball teams never use brand
new baseballs in a game. They're too shiny to play with. So, what do
umpires use to prep the balls and dull the shine? New Jersey mud.
For
nearly three quarters of a century, a special variety of Jersey muck,
Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, has been removing the sheen from
baseballs for just about every professional baseball team in the
country.
It all began in 1938 when an
umpire complained to Lena Blackburne, a third base coach for the old
Philadelphia Athletics, about the sorry condition of the baseballs used
by the American League… Something was needed to take off the shine but not soften the cover.
The Blackburne "Secret Sauce"
Blackburne took on the
challenge. Next time he returned to his home in Burlington County, he
checked out the mud along tributaries of the Delaware River until he
found some muck (the whereabouts of the mud hole is still a dark
secret) with a texture he felt would do the job. Taking a batch to the
Athletics' field house, he rubbed some balls with the stuff. It worked
like a charm! What's more, it had no odor and didn't turn the balls
black.
Soon the entire American
League was using the amazing gunk. Later, the National League took to
using it. Before Blackburne's death in the late 50's, his baseball
rubbing mud was being used by every major and most minor leagues in the
United States…
How it Works
Does [founders' son-in-law and current owner] Jim Bintliff wave a
magic wand over the mud during the winter, or add some mysterious
ingredients to it? That too is a dark secret. He'll never tell. What
counts is that the muck, described as resembling a cross between
chocolate pudding and whipped cold cream, really works! Other kinds of
mud and even mechanical methods have been tried to de-slick baseballs,
but they couldn't make the grade.
So, when the umpire yells "Play ball!" rest assured, good New Jersey mud will be part of the game.
