Inside Baseball: Magic Mud, Torpedo Bats, and High-Altitude Homers

You're listening to part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.

Guess what Mango?

What's that will?

Did you know?

The chance of hitting a home run in baseball actually varies from city to city. And maybe this isn't that surprising when you think about the length of certain fields or you think about the Green Monster in Boston, But actually it goes beyond that. It has to do with the city's elevation. So the higher a city is above sea level, the easier it is to hit a homer in that city.

That's so weird.

I'd never considered that, But why is that exactly? It's actually because air density decreases the higher you go up, and that allows objects to move through it with less resistance. So, for example, when you throw a baseball at a higher elevation, it tends to fly farther than it would at sea level because there's less drag to pull the ball down. And this thin air effect works to the batter's advantage

So I'm curious how big an impact is this having on games? Like how many home runs are we talking about here?

Well, it depends on a few factors, including the equipment that's being used, the skill level of the teams, and of course the elevation that they're playing. So for example, in the case of Denver's home team, the Colorado Rockies, the effect of the low air density was significant enough to bag them an extra home run per game for

Isn't that wild? That's incredible? But like, you know, you think about the fans and like playing at home, not even to travel, Like, how do we know those extra runs were due to altitude and not some other factors?

Yeah, you know, actually this is kind of amazing. So once the Rockies realized that the mountain air was impacting their performance. An engineer at cors Field named Tony Cowell again looking for a way to even things out, and what he discovered was that Denver's lower atmospheric pressure had been causing the team's baseballs to actually dry out, making

Like one of those climate control rooms for fancy people who have cigars.

Yes, yeah, exactly, And it looks like one of those big walk in coolers that they use at restaurants, except this one maintains this steady temperature of seventy degrees fahrenheit and fifty percent humidity, which is the optimal conditions for storing a baseball, which I'm sure you knew already.

Oh yeah, of course, So I'm guessing the human door did the trick. Then.

Yeah.

The Rockies started using it in two thousand and two, and over the next nine seasons, the average number of home runs at Corsfield dropped twenty five percent. It was such an effective way to ensure the integrity of the game that many other teams have since installed humidors of their own.

That is so weird that baseball teams across the country have humidors for the baseballs. But it's kind of unfortunate it hurt their home run stat right, Yeah, well, you know it wasn't completely a selfless act. The team's reputation was on the line since the elevation was clearly affecting

Actually, I didn't know they made them of this size. It's a giant box. That is our friend and producer, Dylan Fagan. Yeah, but I don't think he likes it very much. Every time he takes a bite, he seems to be wincing. Well, that's because Dylan insisted on getting a box that still had a plastic prize inside. But you know, since the company phased those out decades ago, he had to resort to buy in an old, sealed

I really hope the prize is worth it. And that's what nostalgia I really remind you of, Like Cereal boxes used to have toys in them, Like kids don't get any of that anymore, like all the surprises and things. But speaking of Crackerjacks, I was curious how the snack got so intertwined with baseball, and it turns out the product launch at Chicago's World Fair in eighteen ninety three, and by the turn of the century it had become one of the top selling concessions at American ballparks, right

That's right, And of course there's that line, buy me some peanuts and crackerjack I don't care if I never get back.

Yeah. But what's really interesting is that when Jack Norworth wrote the song, he'd actually never attended a baseball game, and for that matter, neither had the song's composer, Albert von Tilzer. They wrote the most famous baseball song in the world with zero firsthand knowledge of the sport they were talking about.

That is amazing, And so I guess it's like the song's really a cry for help, then, like they're begging to be taken out to the ballgame because they've never been before.

Not exactly. So the pair just recognized there was a growing market for songs about baseball, and they managed to write one of the catchiest choruses. Ever, But believe it or not, there is some long forgotten context to this song because while most people are familiar with the song's iconic chorus, you know that it actually has two full verses that are rarely sung. And you might think, well, how big a difference could a few extra lines really make?

I feel like this is a big setup to tell us that the song is actually about football this whole time.

Is that what's happening here?

No, Weirdly, the song is a feminist anthem. Yeah, it's all there in the missing verses. So when you look at the original lyrics and the original sheet music, the lyrics tell the story of Katie Casey, a young woman with baseball fever who turns down her boyfriend's invitation to a vaudeville show and insists that he take her to a ballgame instead.

Oh God, so like the chorus is like her counter offer or something exactly.

And apparently she gets her way because the second verse takes place at the ballgame and describes Katie's efforts to rally support for the team. And I'm going to play the recording here adk the game? Do the players right there?

For name Holy Empire?

He was when the far was just do up, Dodo young, doer up.

The boys Tea made the gang thing this they take me, I'll do the ball game. You know, I thought you might be over selling by car at a feminist anthem, But once you lay it all out, it does feel progressive to write a sports song from a woman's perspective, especially in the nineteen hundreds.

Yeah, and she's really a dynamic character. She's up on her feet, she's arguing with the umpire, she's leading the crowd in a cheer like Katie doesn't feel out of place at all in this ballpark. And what's more is that she seems to have a better grip on the game than most of the men there do.

Yeah, it's interesting because the songwriter didn't seem like much of a baseball fan, but he created this song that seems like it comes from the point of view of one. But do you think he based her on somebody that he actually knew. Well, that's actually why I brought this up. So historians now think that Katie Casey was inspired by

Well, I'm a Philadelphia fan, so I generally know a lot about heartbreak.

Yeah, that's very true. Well, the verb root has always stuck out to me as odd, because what do plant roots have to do with cheering on a sports team.

I mean, I guess ideas that fans feel rooted to their home team the same way that they feel rooted to their hometown, like they're all connected by that shared sense of places. Yeah.

Actually I was thinking something pretty similar to that, but when I looked into it this week, it turns out we've got it all wrong. So, according to I know, this is a big one to get wrong. So, according to Canadian etymologist Gerald Cohen. The idea of quote rooting for a sports team likely comes from animal rooting, like when a pig digs up the ground in search of food, and Cohen had a pretty firm support for this theory too.

I mean, that's a great quote, but it still seems pretty weird, Like, what was it about cheering for a team that reminded people of pigs rooting for truffles or whatever.

Well, Cohen suggested that some excited fans had stomped their feet so ferociously while cheering that to onlookers it appeared as though they were frantically digging a hole.

That is so weird.

Yeah, well, speaking of pigs, this is the fact I love, and I think real pigs might appreciate it as well.

All right, what's that?

So? This fact is about a substance known as magic mud, and for decades it's been smeared on every game ball in Major League Baseball. So, according to players, coating a ball with magic mud increases friction and gives pitchers a better grip on the ball. And the strangest part is that the magic mud is real mud. It's harvested from a secret spot along a Delaware River tributary in South Jersey, and then it's distributed by the MLB to each team's equipment measure.

How weird is that is super weird?

And I always think a baseball is like, you know, there are things that are banned from being able to apply to baseballs, But so Major League Baseball has a secret mud that sort of imbues baseballs with magical properties. I mean, this honestly sounds a little bit made up.

I know. And the wildest part is that until just recently, nobody knew if it was just another weird like baseball superstition, or if the mud really does make the balls perform better. But then in twenty twenty four, researchers that UPenn finally got their hands on a sample of the mud and they were able to conduct a series of experiments to gauge its spreadability, its stickiness, and its grip potential.

I mean, this is one of those jobs that just sounds pretty fun, like getting the play around with mud, slopping it onto baseballs, measuring how sticky it gets.

Sign me up for that, I know. But it was a little bit more involved than that. So in the end, the team's work wound up confirming what the MLB knew all along, which is that the mud really is magic. As one of the study authors puts it, this is the magical thing. The mud spreads like face cream and grips like sandpaper.

Okay, I mean those properties, are they really unique to this specific mud in New Jersey, Like, there's no way to replicate this in a lab or something.

So the weird thing is that MLB has looked into replacing the magic mud with synthetic lubricants, but so far all of their attempts to recreate the MUD's mechanical properties have been a bust to this point. So right now, it's actually much easier just to keep the tradition going and keep using the real thing, which I kind of love.

Yeah, no, I do too.

I mean it is interesting with this magic mud stuff clearly being sanctioned by the league, and like I was saying earlier, you know you still hear cases of pitchers applying other sticky substances to balls to make their pitches spind faster and that sort of thing.

Yeah, which is obviously considered cheating, right.

Yeah, in the cases of things other than this magic mud from New Jersey, I guess. But you know, players aren't supposed to doctor the ball with any foreign material, so there's a limit to how sticky a baseball should be. But as we've shown, this is a sport steeped in tradition, and one of the oldest and most readily embraced traditions is covertly smearing goop on the ball when nobody's looking.

Well. I definitely want to hear all about it, but before we do, let's take a quick break.

You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about the lesser known heroes and of course villains of America's favorite pastime. And since we just talked about magic mud, I think it's a good time to examine one of the worst kept dirty secrets in American baseball. That is, of course, the dreaded spitball pitch. Mango, I know this was one of your favorites. You love throwing the spitball. But before we get to that, Mango, were you much of a baseball player.

Absolutely not. I mean I wish I played more. We played my neighborhood of course, and things like whiffle ball and whatever. But in terms of rec league, I really only played T ball, and I was a terror on the field. Like I would get so excited when I hit the ball and I would fling the bat behind me and race the first base. I injured the volunteer parent. There's so much like the shin so much they had to watch from behind the fence.

Uh.

And also my position was shortstop, and the ball came to me like every single play, but our first baseman, who was the coach's kid, could not catch a ball. So I would get the ball and then I would race over and tag people on their way to first base regularly. And in T ball you play like you know there's not three outs an inning. Like every single person.

Reade, I could picture you doing that because you were always fast. I could picture you always just trying to chase them down every single time. You know, it was around that same age where I broke my arm one year, and that and that dreaded dodgeball accident. You may remember hearing about when when my pe teacher threw the ball so hard at me I flipped over and broke my arm. So what it meant for baseball is they actually allowed me to bat one armed and then have somebody else.

Run for you. So still got to play.

And that's how you ended up on a cover of Sport magazine.

That's right, exactly, all right, Well, let's get back to the spitball. So the spitball is known by many colorful nicknames, including the spitter or the wet one. Throwing a spitball was a common technique used by pitchers in the early days of baseball. Now I involved coating a ball with foreign substances like salve actually most of the time, and it was thought to provide a distinctive dvantage on the mound.

You know, I've never quite understood this, like how to spitting on the ball actually help?

Well, Sometimes the spit was used to reduce the friction between the pitcher's fingers and the ball, causing it to kind of slip out of their hand with less spin than a regular pitch. And other cases, though, the spit was actually used to change the aerodynamic properties of the ball. Applying spit to one side change the ball's wind resistance, and weight just slightly, you know, would affect how it

That's weird. I've never heard about that. But I'm curious, like, do we know who's to blame for this? Like, is there an inventor the spitball that's credited for this?

Well, nobody really knows when the first spitball was thrown or who it was thrown to, but the pitch has definitely been used since, you know, at least the early nineteen hundreds. So George Hildemran of the Brooklyn Superbus is known to have experimented with a technique in nineteen oh two. He's also said to have shared the trick with several other spitball pioneers, including Frank Cordon and Elmer Stricklett, who

I love that this was something pitchers had to learn from a fellow player, like there's some secret art to spitting on a baseball something.

I don't think they needed lessons in proper spit application. It's the throwing technique that's pretty hard to nail down. Not to mention that spitting on the ball wasn't something that most players would organically think to do, so the idea had to be introduced by someone who already knew its advantages. I should note, though, that despite the name not every spitballer used saliva to make their pitchers less predictable.

So it sounds like this was an open secret. Did anyone ever object to it in this early era?

Oh definitely, I mean the ethics of the spitball were always hotly contested. In fact, there were rules dating back to the eighteen nineties that prohibited players from defacing or otherwise damaging the ball, and people argued on both sides whether it was appropriate to cover a ball in saliva,

You mean, like how gross it is to throw a ball code with human spit argument in.

Itself, Yeah, that was the most frequent complaint, But others worried that throwing a spitball put too much strain on a pitcher's arm and could actually do serious damage if used to frequently. End Though, the spitball wasn't banned because it was unsanitary or unfair or dangerous, the real reason it was outlawed was to make the sport more exciting

That makes sense, and so when did this spitball band go into effect?

So officially, the nineteen twenty season was the last year in which spitballs were allowed on the field, and after that any player caught defacing the ball with saliva or anything else was supposed to be expelled from the game

I love that. It's such a crazy fact, Like can you imagine if, like some people were used to tackling with a horse collar football? Oh no, you keep doing it, grandfather, and everyone else has to tackle different.

I bet I bet Burley Grimes did that too.

So obviously there were players who kept throwing spitballs after this, right, Oh.

Absolutely, and pretty blatantly in some cases. So for example, up one of the most famous players to use the dirty pitch was gay Lord Perry, a star pitcher in the nineteen seventies. Throwing spitballs and making the batter think he was throwing spitballs were a huge part of Perry's pitching style, and he leaned hard into that reputation too, even going so far as to name his memoir, Me and the Spitter.

That is so ridiculous.

It is super ridiculous.

But despite his flagrant flawing of the rules, Perry wasn't ejected from a game for using the spitball until his twenty first season in the major leagues, and even then he came right back the next year for a final season, and was later inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now, I do want to note, though, that in recent years, the MLB has cracked down quite a bit on the

Ball or whatever.

That we've totally groast out our listeners. We switch gears and talk about a much cleaner way to line up with baseball game.

That sounds good, But before we do that, let's take a quick break.

Welcome back to part time Genius. Okay, well, so we've talked about a few different baseball icons today, Crackerjack, the Spitball, take me out to the ballgame. But there's one major part of the baseball experience that we still haven't covered yet, and that is pipe organ music, the stuff that drifts over a ballpark during just about every game.

Yeah. I've always wondered that.

I mean not that I mind that it's actually sort of a fun and funny part of the whole experience, But why is there so much organ music in baseball? Like it's hard to imagine the sport without it, and yet it still feels kind of random.

Yeah, So to answer that, we have to go back to a largely ignored milestone in sports history, which is the day when the Chicago Cubs became the first major league team to have live organ music performed at a ballgame. So the story goes that in the spring of nineteen forty one, the Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley wanted a way to give fans a little pregame entertainment as they took to their seats, So he installed a pipe organ behind the grandstand of Wrigley Field, and he hired a

And I'm guessing one of the tunes Nelson provided was back to what we were talking about.

Take Me out to the ballgame.

Weirdly, there isn't a record of which songs he played, but that seems pretty likely. But we do know some other odd details about the concert thanks to local reporting. According to the Chicago Tribune, more than eighteen thousand fans were in attendance that day, and all of them were completely delighted by Nelson's performance. And that's despite the fact that the music wasn't allowed to continue during the actual game.

And why is that so?

Apparently no one had bothered to clear the rights for the songs, and because the game was set to be broadcast on the radio, they had to stop the music before the first pitch was thrown. The same thing happened at a game the following day, but the team's manager promised that by the time the Cubs returned from their upcoming away games, they would have a deal worked out with BMI, the music publishing company.

Yeah, I had never thought about that before.

So once they got the music right squared away, the concerts became just like a more regular thing at Cubs games.

That was the plan, but unfortunately working out the details with BMI proved much much trickier than they'd expected, so by mid May, both the organ and the organists had disappeared from Wrigley Field. Aside from that one day in nineteen forty one, the Cub's home turf was actually organ music free until the late nineteen sixties, which is kind of unimaginable. Wow. But in the meantime, other MLB teams took notice of Wrigley's experiment and they decided to try

LA And I'm curious, was organ music kind of the norm at baseball games by that point?

I mean, it was definitely on its way, but the instrument didn't truly become a fixture of the ballpark until the nineteen sixties and actually the early seventies.

Oh really, I'm actually surprised that was that late in the game, like right.

In the middle of the rock and roll era.

It seems kind of a weird time for people to be embracing this pipe organ music.

Yeah, but you know, the doors had made it popular, so.

They had too, right, right, of course.

But you know, nostalgia's always been a big part of baseball's appeal, and by that point, plenty of fans had fond memories of hearing ballpark organ music in their youth.

That' said.

A lot of the credit for the organ's late stage ascendancy belongs to this woman named Nancy, who was the longtime organist for the Chicago White Sox. When she first took the job at Kamiski Park in nineteen seventy, she pretty much stuck to the baseball playbook right like, she played the Star of Spangled Banner at the start of every game and take Me out to the Ballgame during the seventh inning stretch. And she also carried the tradition on of musically introducing the players at bat by playing

Wait, so is Nancy Faust the person that created walk up music?

Yeah, she actually did, but she didn't stop there. So, fueled by the crowd's positive responses, she started using the organ to react to the game itself. So when someone stole a bass, she plays smooth Criminal. And if someone streaked naked or cross a field, as often happened in those days, she would play an organ rendition of Is

Yeah.

So, actually, here's a clip of her playing it at a game.

You know, I see what you mean about this livening up the game, Like there's more than just background music. She was giving the crowds something to laugh at or sing along with, and you.

Can definitely see how this heightens the whole experience.

Yeah, she was basically scoring the action of the game like you would a film, which you know was kind of a full circle moment for organists because that's exactly what they'd done during the silent film era. Right. Nancy's knack for knowing what to play and when to play it like it really made her this living legend among

Contemporary hits and the organist I started thinking about the SNL sketch with Will Ferrell, and I think it was on a guest tire doing the they were the music teachers and singing the modern hits. But I do have to say I was not expecting such a rosy outlook on the state of ballpark organ music in the year twenty twenty five.

But I'm happy about it.

Yeah, me too, And I think that's the perfect note to go out on. But before we hit the showers and call it a day, I think we should take a few swings at the fact off.

So it's still early in the twenty twenty five season so far, but there's already a breakout start taking the sport by storm.

Now.

It isn't a player, though, but a new piece of equipment called a torpedo bat. Now, unlike a traditional bat, this one is wider in the middle than it is at the top, and that change in shape means there's more mass concentrated in the sweet spot of the barrel, right where the player makes the most contact with the ball. This not only provides much greater impact when the ball and the bat collide, it also makes the bats swing faster because the weight of the wood is distributed more

Okay, so, another baseball innovator who doesn't get enough credit is Harvard athlete James Ting, and in April of eighteen seventy seven, he became the first known baseball player to don a catcher's mask during a game. Wow Prior to that, the only gear a catcher used was a rubber mouthguard similar to that of a boxer, but there was no mask, no chess guard, no shin guards.

Not even a blow was terrifying.

Reckless approach led to frequent injuries, and as a result, the career of the average catcher in the early days of baseball was only three or four seasons. But that finally changed thanks to Ting's new headgear, which was actually designed for him by the Harvard team captain, a guy named Frederick Thayer. It was made from a modified fencing mask, which was meant to keep ting closer to the plate without fear of being injured by either the bat or

Well, something I never knew until this week is that the silent film star Buster Keaton was actually a lifelong baseball fan and a pretty good play or two. But sometimes his love of the game got in the way of his actual job, which was, of course making movies.

Now.

For instance, whenever one of his productions hit a snag on set, Keaton would stop filming and he'd organize this impromptu baseball game with the crew until someone came up with a solution. And while filming at MGM in the late nineteen twenties, Keaton would often put a game together at the end of every lunch break, usually taking half the crew with him. Now, in light of these frequent setbacks, studio exec Lewis B. Mayer reportedly considered adding a no

So he covered some major baseball milestones today. But here's a quick one. I forgot to mention the first known reference to the game being played in the United States, and this dates all the way back to seventeen ninety one. And the funny part is that it doesn't come from an article about the sport, or an ad for an

Okay, this next one provides a little vindication for all of the Katie Caseys of the world who like to argue with the umpire, because, according to a twenty twenty four study from the University of Quebec. Yelling at the ref does get results, and I hate to admit this

I know, and it's going to shape how long going to be as a parent on the field for all my kids soccer.

Right, scream your head off.

Well, here's a very quick one to end this, and I think it's super fun. So I think we both know what a ground roll double is in baseball, where a ball is hit and then bounces out of play. So most often the ball will get hit and then bounce on the ground over the fence, or sometimes it rolls under a scoreboard or something and the player at bat gets an automatic double or it gets to advance

Were they okay?

Using a hat is a penalty of three bases to both the batter and any runner on base, which is just so crazy. I just assumed that you could, like Willie May's basket, catch a fly ball with your hat, But apparently if you do, that's an automatic three basis for anyone on the field.

I did not know that rule. I'd never heard of that.

All right, Well, I think this fact off is basically a tie. But between the baseball mud facts and the ones about taking me onto the ball game, I think I'm going to give this one to you, Mango.

Well, I will take it. There is so much great baseball trivia we didn't get to, from the blind adaptation of baseball called deep ball, to the minor league player who was once traded for twenty baseball bats, the time two Yankee players announced in a press conference that they were dissolving their marriage so that they could switch wives. There is a lot of craziness that we've missed, and we'll have to do another episode down the line, but for now, that's going to do it for today's Part