{"id":7445,"date":"2010-04-09T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=7445"},"modified":"2010-04-07T17:23:35","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T16:23:35","slug":"web-pick-of-the-week-mud-rubbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=7445","title":{"rendered":"Web Pick of the Week: Mud rubbing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6264\" title=\"Web-Pick\" src=\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/Web-Pick.png\" alt=\"Web-Pick\" width=\"128\" height=\"128\" \/>The St Louis Cardinals\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 starter Chris Carpenter earned a win on Opening Day against the Cincinnati Reds, which gave him room to <a href=\"http:\/\/stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com\/news\/article.jsp?ymd=20100405&amp;content_id=9092654&amp;vkey=news_stl&amp;fext=.jsp&amp;c_id=stl\" target=\"_blank\">comment on the condition of the baseballs<\/a> without looking like a sore loser.<\/p>\n<p>Carpenter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s complaint is that the Reds don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t put enough mud on the baseballs. Why would there be mud on the balls in the first place?\u00c2\u00a0 Well, a baseball out of the box has a shine and slickness to it that can make it difficult to grip firmly; therefore a specific type of mud is rubbed into the balls (stop laughing) before the game to make them easier to grip.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Strange but true, and to prove it here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a <a href=\"http:\/\/snaggingbaseballs.mlblogs.com\/archives\/2009\/08\/lena_blackburne_rubbing_mud.html\" target=\"_blank\">web link<\/a> to an article about it by famed baseball snagger, and author of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc<a href=\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=459\" target=\"_blank\">Watching Baseball Smarter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122<\/a>, Zack Hample.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s currently writing a book about baseballs and got the chance to spend some time with the Phillies\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 equipment manager last August, learning about the mud-rubbing process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week&#8217;s web pick is an article about Lena Blackburne Rubbing Mud and the strange process of rubbing it into baseballs before they are used<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-7445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-web-picks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7445"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7448,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7445\/revisions\/7448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}