By Victor Greto
There are some things about the Delaware River that haven’t changed in nearly 70 years.
Like the mud on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of the river near Palmyra, N.J.
It may be here where Jim Bintliff harvests his mud. Then again, it may not.
He won’t say, no matter how many different ways you ask him.
Five times a year, Bintliff marches out with six 5−pound buckets to his secret place to “harvest” mud that will be used to rough up a million major−league baseballs during the course of a season. His company, Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud, is based in Delran, N.J.
His mud, as black and as smooth as greasepaint, feels absurdly clean, smooth as silk.
“It’s an eye thing,” Bintliff says, explaining how he discerns the good mud from the inadequate. But it’s also a feel thing: “The texture has to be just right, too,” he says.
But is it from the Rancocas?
Bintliff only smiles and shakes his head.
Bintliff holds the secret today because Lena Blackburne, a former player during the early part of the 20th century who started the company after leaving the game, was a friend of his grandfather’s.
Blackburne grew up around Palmyra, a town of 7,600 people across the Delaware River from Northeast Philadelphia.
In 1938, when umpires complained about the slickness of baseballs, Blackburne recalled the smooth mud of his youth, Bintliff says, and tried it out. At the time, Blackburne coached third base for the Philadelphia Athletics.
The umpires loved it, and the majors haven’t done without it since.
Since Blackburne’s day, the mud has been found in only three places. The latest area is a place where anyone can go because it’s public land, Bintliff says.
Good mud−harvesting areas do have some requirements − from the stillness of the water to a location at the “inside elbow” of the stream’s bank.
“I know when to harvest it,” Bintliff says. “It has to do with the flow of the creek, its direction.”
He doesn’t do it for the money.
Each team uses 64 ounces of his mud in a season. The costs are nominal: $45 for a 32−ounce container, a price that hasn’t gone up in five years. He also sells the mud to minor−league teams, and some high school teams.
Brokering the mud and keeping the mud’s secret is about carrying on tradition, he says, and the pride of supplying an essential part of America’s national pastime.