What is more fundamental to baseball than actual baseballs? I have long been fascinated by baseballs; in fact I collect them as a way of understanding and appreciating the game in all its historical nuance.
Each ball in major and minor league baseball is rubbed with a special mud for the purposes of removing the shine and make it less slick. There are some great stories about this. Umpires were simply using any mud available, with problematic results, until 1938, when Philadelphia Athletics third base coach Lena Blackburne discovered the perfect baseball mud along the New Jersey banks of the Delaware River.