Page 28 - MidJersey Business - November/December 2014

REAL MUDSLINGERS

LENA BLACKBURNE RUBBING MUD IS A PART OF BASEBALL HISTORY

he baseball Willie Mays ran down and the balls the Philadelphia Athletics when he was approached by an

Hank Aaron, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds umpire looking for a way to improve the grip on baseballs.
belted into the history books all had a piece of Blackburne was an avid isherman from Palmyra and ex-

New Jersey on them.
perimented with mud he found back home. It was odorless
Since 1938, every ball used in a professional and didn’t turn the baseballs black. Its popularity spread

baseball game has been covered in muck straight from the
across the league and Blackburne’s mud business was born.
T
When Blackburne died 1968 (he is buried in Cinnamin- Garden State. Speciically, the baseballs are broken in with

son), he willed the mud company to his business partner Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud, harvested from a
John Haas. It was passed on to his son-in-law, Burns secret spot in the Burlington County backwoods.

Bintlif, and was eventually passed down to his son, James, When new baseballs come out of the box, they are glossy
who now runs Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud.
and pitchers, who rely on control, struggle with gripping

He harvests mud up to seven times per year and sells them. They must be rubbed with a compound that
32-ounce containers of it for $75. There is a succession eliminates that sheen and for many years, Major

plan in place and plans to expand the business to football (a League Baseball experimented with diferent com-

number of NFL and NCAA teams already use his mud).
pounds, from inield dirt to human spit, in an efort
“It’s more of a hobby than a business,” says Bintlif, 57, to de-gloss its baseballs. Nothing has ever worked

still a full-time pressman at a local printing plant. “I’m a fan better than the mud found here in New Jersey.
of the game and it’s a pretty neat feeling to know my mud is Blackburne was an inielder who played for the

on the ball, from the irst pitch of spring training to the last White Sox, Reds, Phillies, and Braves between 1910 and
out of the World Series.”
1929. In the late 1930s, he was the third base coach for

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