Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by CSMastermind on Sunday June 09, 2024 @04:32PM
(#40627354)
It's weird that they don't talk about what they're doing that supposedly makes the soil so special. They mention that once they installed the soil at the Pirates stadium (about 2 hours away from where it's manufactured) the number of rain delays dropped. If it were a property of the local soil you'd assume the existing soil in the pirates stadium would already have it. I can't believe the clay composition differs that much on a two hour drive.
Instead I'm guessing it has something to do with how they process it?
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by affinepplan on Monday June 10, 2024 @10:21AM
(#40633963)
the sugar content of a McDonald's bun is public knowledge
Their competitive advantage has nothing to do (or at least extremely little) with recipe trade secrets. Any professional test kitchen could reproduce any McDonald's item within weeks
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by teruakohatu on Monday June 10, 2024 @05:49PM
(#40639576)
New Zealand is a major milk exporter, some countries pay a premium for our milk.
And yet the milk we locals buy in the supermarket (which I am sure is the same as our exports) is milk that has been divided into its core elements (fat sugar protein) and the recombined in a certain ratio.
New Zealand milk does not come from a cow, and I would think PA dirt baseball fields do not come from the ground, but rather PA has the right raw ingredients at hand.
On a side now people here pay a premium for “raw milk” (unpasteurised straight from a cow).
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by jihadjihad on Sunday June 09, 2024 @09:38PM
(#40629290)
That's crazy, I've never heard of that before, and I've watched plenty of baseball. They just straight up rub the balls in mud, before every game? And just rinse them and they're good to go?
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by metadat on Monday June 10, 2024 @09:46PM
(#40641402)
Yet they don't sell these treated balls by default en-mass. Kids don't grow up playing with a proper baseball.
Seems kinda sad, it'd be cool if the MLB kept it real by diverting a small amount of profit to make sure public schools had legit baseballs to train the next generation with.
They could market the fuck out of this, too. Why aren't these MLB exdecs a tad more creative?
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by mcpeepants on Monday June 10, 2024 @11:26PM
(#40641954)
iirc the location of the mud is secret, and there is some question of legality due to it not being private land(?). it may be difficult to source a vast quantity of magic mud for public sale/charity/marketing.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by ssl-3 on Tuesday June 11, 2024 @01:17AM
(#40642619)
They don't sell treated balls, no. Not to the MLB or to anyone else. The mud folks are not in the business of performing ball treatments; they are instead in the business of selling mud.
As I understand it, in professional baseball, it is the job of the umpires to this use mud to take the sheen off of new balls, pre-game.
There is nothing here to be sad or outraged about. There is no scarcity or exclusivity here.
Nothing but a small amount of money and mutual agreement on a procedural change prevents anyone from getting some of this same mud from the same source and having their own umpires in their own [kid or adult] league do the same thing for new baseballs.
Or: There is nothing that prevents a person from buying some of this mud and using it to pre-process baseballs, and -- as you say -- marketing the fuck out of it.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by legitster on Monday June 10, 2024 @04:57PM
(#40638994)
Breaking in balls for professional sports is a whole thing.
Brand new equipment out of the box sucks, but if you let equipment managers bring out old balls than there is going to be wild variations between every different ball used. So having a consistent break-in process is pretty important.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by mmmlinux on Monday June 10, 2024 @04:41PM
(#40638758)
Why does he have to make up a story about why hes getting the mud. Is he not allowed to be taking mud from a public place and reselling it, since that's what it sounds like hes doing.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by tyree731 on Monday June 10, 2024 @04:59PM
(#40639013)
Since the location of where the mud is gathered is considered a secret, I imagine it's more about giving people a different reason as to why he's there.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by LeifCarrotson on Monday June 10, 2024 @05:21PM
(#40639267)
Probably a bit of both.
Assuming the oft-cited Delaware River and Palmyra references are genuine, no, Blackburne Rubbing Mud does not own any public property in Palmyra. Blackburne's registered address is 60 miles away. There's about a mile of riverfront on a public park, an industrial warehouse, and some condos.
He's stealing the mud from public property. I'm sure that he'd be arrested if he showed up with an excavator and tried to start a gravel pit on a nature trail, but, it turns out, you can boast on national media about taking dirt from a public park if you only take a couple hundred pounds of it a year and do it sneakily, two bucketfuls at a time.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by DiggyJohnson on Monday June 10, 2024 @05:38PM
(#40639470)
There are so many plausible arrangement for this to be legal without his main company owning the riverfront property that and it’s absurd for you to think you’ve uncovered a scam in plain sight of a beloved and well known process .
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by Projectiboga on Monday June 10, 2024 @09:02PM
(#40641131)
Palmyra NJ is a distraction. It comes from a South Jersey creek in the same county as Palmyra. I think that water is cleaner than the Delaware itself. That water runs through a forest type boundary between, I believe, three forest types, so that specific mud may actually be fairly unique.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by FL410 on Monday June 10, 2024 @12:21PM
(#40635222)
This is neat. First I heard of it was this last weekend, when they mentioned during the Phillies/Mets game in London that the dirt had been shipped in from here as well.
Re:Why Western Pennsylvania dirt is used in the infields of ...
by Turing_Machine on Monday June 10, 2024 @02:54PM
(#40636949)
TFA is behind a paywall, so I don't know if this was mentioned.
I've read that the Romans used to import arena sand from a certain area in North Africa because it was somehow better than the local sand. I think it was also used in upscale athletic facilities as well.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180730152634/https://www.post-...
Instead I'm guessing it has something to do with how they process it?
That would be like a bakery asking McDonald's how much sugar they put in their buns. If everyone could do it, they'd be out of business.
Their competitive advantage has nothing to do (or at least extremely little) with recipe trade secrets. Any professional test kitchen could reproduce any McDonald's item within weeks
And yet the milk we locals buy in the supermarket (which I am sure is the same as our exports) is milk that has been divided into its core elements (fat sugar protein) and the recombined in a certain ratio.
New Zealand milk does not come from a cow, and I would think PA dirt baseball fields do not come from the ground, but rather PA has the right raw ingredients at hand.
On a side now people here pay a premium for “raw milk” (unpasteurised straight from a cow).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/sports/baseball/baseball-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_Rubbing_Mud
Seems kinda sad, it'd be cool if the MLB kept it real by diverting a small amount of profit to make sure public schools had legit baseballs to train the next generation with.
They could market the fuck out of this, too. Why aren't these MLB exdecs a tad more creative?
Such claims with zero scientific evidence do add a dimension of mystique and lore, which may draw some folks in.
As I understand it, in professional baseball, it is the job of the umpires to this use mud to take the sheen off of new balls, pre-game.
The mud itself is for sale, and has been for a very long time: https://www.baseballrubbingmud.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Sc...
There is nothing here to be sad or outraged about. There is no scarcity or exclusivity here.
Nothing but a small amount of money and mutual agreement on a procedural change prevents anyone from getting some of this same mud from the same source and having their own umpires in their own [kid or adult] league do the same thing for new baseballs.
Or: There is nothing that prevents a person from buying some of this mud and using it to pre-process baseballs, and -- as you say -- marketing the fuck out of it.
Brand new equipment out of the box sucks, but if you let equipment managers bring out old balls than there is going to be wild variations between every different ball used. So having a consistent break-in process is pretty important.
You should see the kind of shenanigans they do in the football world: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4136154/2023/01/31/nfl-kick...
Assuming the oft-cited Delaware River and Palmyra references are genuine, no, Blackburne Rubbing Mud does not own any public property in Palmyra. Blackburne's registered address is 60 miles away. There's about a mile of riverfront on a public park, an industrial warehouse, and some condos.
He's stealing the mud from public property. I'm sure that he'd be arrested if he showed up with an excavator and tried to start a gravel pit on a nature trail, but, it turns out, you can boast on national media about taking dirt from a public park if you only take a couple hundred pounds of it a year and do it sneakily, two bucketfuls at a time.
I've read that the Romans used to import arena sand from a certain area in North Africa because it was somehow better than the local sand. I think it was also used in upscale athletic facilities as well.
I love that.