Study Shows Baseball’s ‘Magic’ Mud Is More Than Superstition—The 80-Year-Old Hack Really Works!

This year’s World Series may be over, but the sport has yet another success story that’s making headlines. This time, however, the legend in question isn’t a player—it’s the famous “magic mud.” Researchers decided to analyze the mysterious substance that’s been around since the 1930s to see if it truly is as special as the pros make it out to be. Keep reading to find out more about the results of the magic mud study and why it was revealed to be a crucial part of the sport.

What is baseball’s magic mud?

The “magic mud” has become quite famous thanks to its longtime use in Major League Baseball (MLB). In fact, it’s been applied to the baseballs for every game for more than 80 years.   

“When you take a dollop out of it and you put it on your hand, it’s just like a nice facial cream and feels smooth,” study co-author and Penn geophysicist Douglas J. Jerolmack told Popular Science. “It doesn’t feel gritty at all when it’s a dollop of paste in your hand. It’s after you spread it that it dries and feels gritty.”

The substance is provided to each MLB team’s equipment manager, who then applies it to every ball before a game. It’s so commonplace that it was used in this year’s playoffs.

The history of magic mud in baseball

With balls being thrown at an impressive speed, it would be easy for things to go awry if players couldn’t get a proper grip on the ball. Unfortunately, this proved to be the case during a game in 1920.

According to NBC News, New York Yankees pitcher Carl Mays hurled the ball toward Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman and accidentally struck him in the head. The blow ended up killing him. It was this tragedy that prompted concerns about fast pitches and fresh slick baseballs.

However, a quick solution was hard to come by. Once the president of the National League started requiring umpires to soil the balls starting in 1929, the substances they tried all failed. These included infield dirt, shoe polish and tobacco spit—all of which scratched the leather or discolored it too much.

Then in 1938, a third-base coach for the Philadelphia Athletics recalled an unusual mud he had encountered as a child in New Jersey. Once he got his hands on the substance and started applying it to the balls, the “magic mud” caught on. It was so popular that he was able to start selling it.

Eventually, he passed the company on to a friend, whose relatives have continued to harvest and sell the mud ever since. The location where they find the mud has been a well-kept secret though. All that is known is that the Bintliff family collects it from a spot along the Delaware River estuary in southern New Jersey, reports Popular Science.

The other mystery that has surrounded the magic mud for decades? If it helps the ball perform better, or if it’s simply a sports superstition.

The details of the study on magic mud

In 2019, a sportswriter named Matthew Gutierrez asked a group of scientists at the University of Pennsylvania to analyze the composition and flow behavior of the mud. But a quick analysis was unable to find evidence that the substance has any benefits for the sport, according to Phys.org.

Two years later, the topic was revisited, with three experiments being designed to further investigate. One focused on the mud’s spreadability, one looked at its stickiness and another measured how it affected baseballs’ friction against the fingertips.

The results of the study on magic mud in baseball 

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirmed that the longtime use of the magic mud has been for a good reason. The substance has exactly the right amount of spreadablity, friction and stickiness to provide players with a good grip on the otherwise slick ball.

Even more surprising for the researchers? How all of the mud’s elements come together in just the right amounts to make it perfect for the job. “It’s the fact that   it spreads as if there’s no sand in it at all. But once it dries, the sparse amount of sand that is there provides this friction effect,” Jerolmack said, according to Popular Science. “It has just the right proportions of fine, sticky particles and sparse amounts of large, angular particles. We just didn’t expect to see them together.”

Though the league has tried to replace the mud with synthetic options over the years, nothing has been able to replicate it perfectly. It appears the natural substance truly is original!