One would think by now someone would have come up with a method to automatically do it - a machine that has the mud and spins the ball in it in a way that gets every part of the ball equally. Then spits the ball out and does the next one. How bloody hard could that be to make?

Wasn’t this once done by the home plate umpire? Maybe they didn’t want to get their hands dirty, but returning to that practice would likely ensure greater uniformity. Home team clubhouse attendants are going to cater to the whims of that day’s starting pitcher, if any are sufficiently picky about such stuff.

"Thank you, John Northey! We'll get right on a machine to cover baseballs with mud, spit, and blood." - Rob Manfred

"Thank you, John Northey! We'll get right on a machine to cover baseballs with mud, spit, and blood." - Rob Manfred

Brought to you by CampingWorld.

Did I miss something where there was an actual problem that uniform muddying techniques would solve? I know "hey we've always done it this way" isn't much of a reason to keep doing things that way, but this sure has a "make work for middle management" feel to it ... I'm picturing Manfred getting fresh spreadsheets each morning with the results of the previous day's muddying and then haranguing the staff over why they don't have the right cover page.

The major leagues have created this problem by the constant changing of the baseball almost every batter. Balls were used over and over for a long time until they were fouled into stands or taken out of play if they got dinged up.

Now they go through hundreds a game. A prices of muddying up two or three dozen balls becomes more problematic if you have to to 200-300.

I believe the umps did use to do this. I want to say there is a passage in an Angell book about this.

What does Muddy Ruel have to say about all this?

(Aside: after the 1956 season, Ruel's continuous 43-year career in baseball ended when he was fired as GM of the Detroit Tigers. He retired to Palo Alto, California. When he died of a heart attack in 1963, he was interred in Alta Mesa Memorial Park, where he keeps company with Steve Jobs, Shirley Temple, William Shockley, Tennessee Ernie Ford, and other luminaries.)

I believe the umps used to do it. Then they started paying a clubbie to do it. Now its probably someone's job who in some cases half-asses it.

Several pitchers have complained about the balls this year, rejecting ball after ball because they have no grip.

Its like many jobs, if no-one checks it, it doesn't get done properly.

When I worked in the Atlantic League (15 years ago now), the umpires did 6 dozen to start the game. If we started to run short, the clubhouse attendants would do more a dozen at a time depending on where we were in the game. The difference in quality between most of the umpires (who literally worked dozens of game balls every day) or me (who had to do the backups pretty much every day) and a random batboy doing it once or twice a season was very significant. I think they finally moved on to just doing a bunch at a time at the beginning of the season to act as buffer stock, but not sure if the umpires still do any before the game.

The most surreal part of experience was actually buying the mud. Because I wasn't an umpire, I had to provide a letter from the league authorizing me to buy mud.

I'm going to show my ignorance here, but why don't they just manufacture the balls to be less glossy and be more similar to a ball that has already been muddied?

Surely you can control the uniformity better at the manufacturing stage as opposed to 30 different club houses trying to achieve some common state of the ball?

For those who haven't read the SI story from a couple of years ago: Mud Maker: The Man Behind MLB’s Essential Secret Sauce.

I'm going to show my ignorance here, but why don't they just manufacture the balls to be less glossy and be more similar to a ball that has already been muddied?

From the SI story:

Rawlings has spent years researching Bintliff’s mud and developed several prototypes for a new ball. It’s come up with several—tested in spring training and fall league and, recently, in a brief experiment in the independent Atlantic League. But pitchers have long been accustomed to the grip that they get from the mud, and it has proved tricky to find a suitable replacement that satisfies everyone. “When you hand Pitcher A the ball, he says, ‘I love it,’ ” Thompson says. “You hand Pitcher B the ball, he says, ‘Too tacky.’ When you hand Pitcher C the ball, he says, ‘Not tacky enough.’ How do you win?”

Rawlings and MLB have continued to test different options, looking for something that keeps the same standard of playability, that keeps the same color, that doesn’t lose its feel when it’s thwacked into a catcher’s mitt or when it’s coated with sweat or doused in rainwater. Blackburne’s mud was originally called magic, and that seems to be exactly what baseball is searching for, eight decades later.

(I think your question is a very good one and I find the above passage kind of absurd. Some players will complain about everything; TFA shows that even the current balls don't make everyone happy.)

#11 Even way back pitchers complained about the ball. Ron Luciano thought it was mostly mind games and when a pitcher wanted a ball replaced he'd routinely work that ball back in. He said only one pitcher was consistent -- if he didn't like it initially he wouldn't like it when Luciano worked it back in.

Jim Palmer.

I'm going to show my ignorance here, but why don't they just manufacture the balls to be less glossy and be more similar to a ball that has already been muddied?

Famously, the Japanese league does exactly that.