Ninja Pajamas, and other good things.

Things I know about, that other people tend not to know about, that there is really no point in knowing about, but I know about anyway.

Baseball's version of Secret Sauce

Did you know that a brand new baseball is virtually useless? They are very shiny and slick, and therefore slip and slide out of pitcher's hands and their perfect whiteness can blind batters. In 1920, Ray Chapman became the only modern major leaguer to die as a direct result of being hit by an errant pitch of a too-shiny new ball. After that point, baseball folk tried rubbing down balls with everything imaginable, tobacco chew juice, mud, and shoe polish included, to take the sheen off of the balls, and, in a roundabout way, save lives. Nothing worked quite right.

Finally, in the mid-1930's, a fellow by the name of Lena Blackburn went in search of the perfect mud for baseballs. After harvesting, straining, the addition of a secret ingredient, and aging, this special mud becomes the mud of choice for all major league teams, and is now a part of the Baseball Hall of Fame as well as listed by name in the Major League Baseball Rules. The location of the mud source is a closely kept secret now in it's fourth generation.

More than you ever wanted to know here:

An undated A/P article and commentary by baseball fans

A picture of Lena Blackburne and a short history of the mud

The official site of baseball rubbing mud where you can order your own lovingly hand packed tub of the magic stuff that is a consistency somewhere between "chocolate pudding and whipped cold cream."