Warning: This post is about a dirty subject. It's about mud and baseball. And it has nothing to do with the outfield at Consol Energy Park.
Jim Schaly sits in the air-conditioned umpires' dressing room at CEP, six boxes of new, white Frontier League baseballs – one dozen balls per box, each stamped with the signature of commissioner Bill Lee – stacked at his feet. It's one hour before game time and Schaly's hands are busy. They're covered in dark mud and tobacco spit.
On this night, it's Schaly's job to dull the new baseballs. In other words, apply mud to the pristine white baseballs and rub off the shine. To do this, most umpires in the Frontier League use Lena Blackburne's Rubbing Mud mixed with spit or water and some old-fashioned elbow grease.
The mud is named after Russell "Lena" Blackburne, a major league infielder of little significance in the 1910s and a former third-base coach with the Philadelphia Athletics. As the story goes, Blackburne found the mud in a "secret location" while poking around the banks of the Delaware River shortly after the 1938 season. And for the last 69 years, Blackburne's muck has been applied to baseballs.
The dark Blackburne mud, which has been described as a cross between chocolate pudding and cold cream, dulls the shine on the baseballs, softens the seams and takes away the slick feel. It allows pitchers, catchers and fielders to have a better grip on the ball.
"Pitchers appreciate this. They don't appreciate much that we do, but they appreciate this," Schaly says.
Schaly dips the tips of his fingers into a $25 plastic container of Blackburne mud, spits tobacco juice on his hand and rapidly rubs the mixture onto several new baseballs. He repeats the procedure severals times and a dozen balls are game-ready.
"We do this before every game," Schaly says. "It used to be that the umpires rubbed up all the baseballs. Now, in the major leagues, they have other people whose job it is to rub the baseballs. Most of the schools in the Big Ten have gone to having somebody rub the baseballs. At Penn State, we still rub the baseballs.
"I read an article about the guy in Pittsburgh who rubs the baseballs before Pirates games. The guy works for the equipment manager and has a favorite soap opera that he watches every afternoon. He rubs up 100 baseballs while watching his soap opera. If it ever takes me an hour to do 100 balls, then it's time to kill me."
In the Frontier League, umpires are to begin each game with four to six dozen baseballs.
"Some umpires might take 20 minutes to rub up four dozen. I can do four dozen in five minutes," Schaly says.
Not all umpires apply the mud in the same manner.
"Some guys use spit, some use water," adds Chuck Adya, one of Schaly's partners on this night. "I've even seen some umpires use a paintbrush to apply the mud to the balls."
A few minutes later, Schaly, who is the home-plate umpire on this night, puts 54 baseballs into a bag that is to be taken to the field prior to the start of the Wild Things' game. Schaly leaves another six to put in the ball bags that hang from his belt loops during the game.
"In the Frontier League, we're supposed to begin each game with four or five dozen baseballs," Schaly says. "Some nights, we might need more. The batboys know where we keep the baseballs. We've had nights when we've run out and the batboys had to rub up more balls during the game."
So the next time you go chasing a foul ball at CEP, keep in mind that some umpire has probably spit tobacco juice on it and rubbed it in mud.
