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Baseball Mud
June 24, 2024
The Boys of Summer is a
song by the
American musician,
Don Henley (b. 1947),
founding member and
drummer of the
Eagles.[1] The
lyrics, which evoke the
nostalgic theme of
summer love were written by Henley, and the song was released on October 26, 1984, in the
studio album,
Building the Perfect Beast. The
phrase,
boys of summer, is often used as a
synonym for
baseball players in the
major leagues, although the
World Series is played long after the
autumnal equinox.
A baseball. The leather cover of a baseball is created from two pieces of a shape that's similar to certain hygiene products.
According to MathWorld, The baseball cover was invented by Elias Drake in the 1840s, presumably by a trial and error process.[2]
(Wikimedia Commons image by Tage Olsin. Click for larger image.)
A
manufactured baseball has a
smooth surface with very little
friction, and this makes it hard for a baseball
pitcher to
throw with great
accuracy. Friction allows pitchers to throw the ball with a
spin, resulting in a
curveball. Pitchers in the early days of baseball enhanced the friction by several
ad hoc techniques that included
rubbing with
tobacco juice from the then
ubiquitous chewing tobacco, but more often by rubbing with a
mixture of
spit and
pitcher's mound soil.
Lena Blackburne (1886-1968), an
infielder and
coach for a
Philadelphia baseball team, decided to search for a
standard material in the late
1930s. Blackburne found
silt for a rubbing mud on the
New Jersey side of the
Delaware River (said to be "near"
Palmyra, New Jersey).
The Delaware River is presently notable as
costing $3.50 for
crossing at the
Delaware Water Gap, which is something I do several times during the
year, but many times in the past (at $1.00) when my
daughter was a
college student in
Pennsylvania. Blackburne founded a
company to sell Lena Blackburne
Baseball Rubbing Mud. The
American League used the mud soon after its discovery, and it was in use by every Major League Baseball team by the
1950s.
It's nice to make
money from something that's
dug from the ground with very little
processing, and making a considerable
profit at this belies the
expression,
dirt cheap. About a thousand
pounds of the
silt is
harvested each year, and the mud mixture is
sieved before it's
packaged for
sale. Another example of a material that's dug and used with very little processing is
kieselguhr, also known as
diatomaceous earth, the
fossil shells of
diatoms. Diatomaceous earth is about as close to a
free lunch as a
materials scientist can get.
A Scanning electron micrograph of a diatom fossil, looking much like the front end of a microphone I once had.
Some people who are not familiar with diatom fossils have believed that what they have discovered are pieces of some extraterrestrial artifact.
Diatom fossils are just a few tens of micrometers in size.
(CSIRO image. Click for larger image.)
Diatomaceous earth is a mixture of
silica (SiO
2, 80-90%),
alumina (Al
2O
3, 2-4%) and
iron oxide (Fe
3O
4, 0.5-2%). This mixture of
inorganic oxides can be used to
thermally insulate high temperature
furnaces. Diatomaceous earth is also used as an
abrasive, a
filtration medium, a
support medium for
catalysts, and a
filler for
plastics. The
absorbency of diatomaceous earth makes it useful for
cat litter, and also as a way to stabilize
nitroglycerin to form
dynamite.
Baseball mud has the surprising
property that it
spreads like an
expensive face cream, but it contains a considerable quantity of sand.[3] A
scientific study of the
material properties of baseball mud has been undertaken by a group of
geophysicists and
mechanical engineers from the
University of Pennsylvania (UPenn, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).[3-4] The team is led by
Douglas Jerolmack, a
professor of
Earth and Environmental Science at UPenn, and it includes
postdoctoral research associate,
Shravan Pradeep, and mechanical engineering student,
Xiangyu Chen.[4]
Jerolmack's interest in baseball mud started in 2019, when a
sports journalist asked him to
analyze a sample of the mud.[3] Jerolmack's
cursory analysis of the material showed its composition to be a mixture of
sand, silt,
clay, and
water, and there was no
clue to its special properties.[3] Further
viscosity testing revealed a property called
shear-thinning for which a material thins with applied
force, and this allows creation of a very thin layer of mud on the baseball.[3]
As the
research continues, its suspected that trace components of the mud beyond sand, silt, clay, and water, might be responsible for it's special properties.[3-4] Two such components may be
organic chemicals from
decaying plant matter and
microbial secretions.[3] Jerolmack thinks that with enough research, he could make a version of his own, not to compete with baseball mud, but for use as an
industrial lubricant.[3] Major League Baseball has searched for an alternative material to the mud, and it's tested balls treated
chemical additive from
Dow Chemical.[3] The motivation, of course, is
quality control year over year, and resistance to having just one
supplier of the material.
References:
- Don Henley, "The Boys Of Summer," official music video, via YouTube.
- Eric W. Weisstein, "Baseball Cover," MathWorld (A Wolfram Web Resource).
- Tom Avril, "What's so ‘magic' about the secret South Jersey mud rubbed on baseballs? These Penn researchers think they know why," The Inquirer, October 27, 2023.
- Nathi Magubane, "The alchemy behind the diamond: Unearthing baseball’s beloved mud," University of Pennsylvania Press Release, October 30, 2023.
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