[HN Gopher] Soft matter mechanics of baseball's Rubbing Mud
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       Soft matter mechanics of baseball's Rubbing Mud
        
       Author : spike021
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2024-11-05 16:46 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.pnas.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.pnas.org)
        
       | breput wrote:
       | The location of the source of the mud is a closely held family
       | secret, but I bet the OSI geolocating people could find it
       | quickly based on this video[0]
       | 
       | [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYXWL1lt_7Y
        
         | IncreasePosts wrote:
         | It's not "really" a secret - anyone in the area of Palmyra who
         | knows baseball probably knows of Jim, and knows almost exactly
         | where it comes from. I think what keeps this secret not well
         | known is that it isn't exactly a gold mine - there is only a
         | single buyer for the mud, and the sales total to about $20k/yr,
         | with a lot of manual labor collecting and filtering the mud.
         | It's not worth it for anyone to try to scoop his mud source.
        
           | spike021 wrote:
           | I think the interesting side to that perspective is if the
           | mud could be used elsewhere. Sure it's only used in baseball
           | now and that's an extremely small market (relatively
           | speaking), but if other uses could be found for the mud,
           | maybe things change.
        
             | tmiku wrote:
             | Check out paragraph 3 of the Discussion section.
        
           | Loughla wrote:
           | That's a pretty sweet side gig for him though. I have to
           | imagine that he has access to MLB paraphernalia just by
           | association with them. That alone would be cool, let alone
           | the 20k.
        
           | a_e_k wrote:
           | > there is only a single buyer for the mud
           | 
           | Monopsony!
        
       | trevin wrote:
       | Good, related thread on where the MLB gets most of their infield
       | dirt from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40619311
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-05 23:00 UTC)