Whizzing toward them at somewhere around 100 miles per hour, the fouled-off fastball took dead aim at the two fans nestled alone in a front row just off home plate. Smacking into the protective screen, the ball fell to the ground proudly, having provided a proper amount of exhilaration to balance the slightly higher ticket price.
Even on an evening when temperatures hovered in the low nineties at game time and billowing smoke from the then-three-day-old lightning-caused “Pinyon Fire” in the southern end of the valley thickened the air, rooting for the home team came easy to those taking in a midweek Salt Lake Bees game at Spring Mobile Ballpark.
With banter and brews flowing freely and subject matter ranging from the relative merits of Chicago Dogs as opposed to brats and why the Bees, who’d won nine out of ten and six in a row, were suddenly so red-hot, the routine act of a ball boy bringing new balls to the home-plate umpire presented the two fans with what would become the crux topic of the evening: baseball rubbing mud.
It would be the male of the species, of course, the pedantic one, who would first bring up and then dominate the conversation about how each and every new baseball used at the professional level had to be rubbed with a special mud before they were allowed to be put into play.
Although his knowledge base on the subject was somewhat limited, that didn’t keep him from going on and on about how the mandatory rubbing of mud onto baseballs gave pitchers a better grip and more control over the ball so they wouldn’t “accidentally” drill the opposing batter.
Of course, the fact that mud-rubbing also makes it easier for a pitcher to strategically nail a batter on purpose, as payback for a member of his own team getting whacked, is only one of the ironies inherent to the line in the rule book that requires umpires to make sure that the factory gloss has been removed from each ball.
There is also the monopoly long held by Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud (of New Jersey) to supply all major-league teams and their minor-league affiliates (including the Bees) with extract from its triple-secret hush-hush magic-voodoo Jersey shore mudhole the Bees being an affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim.)
With that night’s Bees’ opponent, the Oklahoma City RedHawks, scoring once in the second inning and the Bees coming back to tie it up in the third, the game proceeded at a snail’s pace with the home plate umpire continually making trips to the mound to break up what he saw as unnecessary filibustering from both sides of the aisle.
The upside to this for the two fans in question was that it allowed for mud talk and suds consumption to continue pretty much unabated. The pedantic one sustained his mushy-clay folklore, refusing to come up for air even when treading the unsure ground of whose job it is to rub up the required six-dozen baseballs prior to each game.
He believed that the duty belonged to the umpires but doubt arose as he recalled reading something about various clubhouse personnel also being given permission to wallow in the mystical muck. The game itself came to his rescue, however, with the Bees, who would end up with four triples for the evening, scoring two runs in each of the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings.
Not that the game had speeded up any. It’s just that runners crossing the plate on a semi-regular basis relieves the tedium. However, after eight innings, with the game reaching the 3-hour mark and the home team comfortably in front 7 to 4, it was decided that slipping out early for the drive back to Hebertown wasn’t a bad idea.
Mud or no mud, in the relatively short time it took to leave the building, Salt Lake reliever Adam Russell began to lose his grip. First, seemingly attempting to stick the pre-mudded ball in the opposing batter’s ear, he caught him on his upraised elbow. Then he walked the next guy on four pitches.
And finally he loaded the bases by, yes, you guessed it, beaning yet one more Oklahoma City batter. You had to wonder if the Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud company offered any kind of money-back guarantee.
By the time the AM station carrying the Bees games had been located on the radio dial, the worst-case scenario had been realized. There was no joy in Mudville! All three runners had scored and the ballgame was knotted at 7. Luckily, the station lost its reach in the canyon. The news that the Bees would get their mud together and come back and win it in the 10th would be left for the following morning.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social scenes for more than 40 years.