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?
Considering over 1,140,000 (2019 figures[0]) balls get used through the season (not even including practice and playoff balls), it's an astounding amount of mud rubbing action.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1171328/2019/08/29/what-you...
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...