49 – Here’s Mud in Your Eye!

RUBBERY SHRUBBERY Post 49

This is the Rubbery Shrubbery blog, where you’ll learn how Yachats (YAH-hots), Oregon, acquires a Major League Baseball franchise. To learn more about Yachats (“Playground of Neurons”) and its inhabitants—called Yachatians (yah-HAY-shuns)— please go to this page or go to GoYachats.

Today Harrison Grutch will continue in his highly educational series of interviews, asking Yachatians how they hope to make a fast buck off the baseball industry. The astonishing entrepreneurial wizard, Elmer Sludgemore, will describe how a simple observation will make him filthy rich.

Here’s Mud in Your Eye!
by Harrison Grutch

This here is Harrison, and I’m standing on the bank of the Yachats River talking to Elmer about his baseball business acumen. (You can get a gander at the mighty Yachats in Fig. 1.) Elmer is one of those entrepreneurs who didn’t amount to a hill of parsnips until he lucked out and had a brilliant idea. I’ll let him tell you about it.

Figure 1. The mighty Yachats River, with rainbow.*

Harrison: Hey, Elmer, I suppose the new Yachats Smelt franchise will open up plenty of opportunities for baseball-related businesses in Yachats.

Elmer: That it will, Harrison. It’s amazing how many ways there are to make money off this game. Whoever invented it should be given a medal. I think we are on the verge of boom times in the land of the Smelt.

Harrison: Well, tell us how you got started.

Elmer: Sure. You see, new baseballs have this shine on them that makes them slick. Add a little sweat on the ball, and you can’t throw the darn thing—it’ll go squirting off, like an oiled eel. So that shine has to be taken off, and in the 1930s, Lena Blackburne, a major league player and manager (see Fig. 2), started rubbing the shine off with a special mud. It’s become a baseball tradition for umpires to rub balls with the Official Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud. For years that mud has come from a secret spot on the Delaware River in New Jersey.

Figure 2. Lena Blackburne, sitting between Hall of Famers Eddie Collins (left) and Ty Cobb. Lena is protecting his glove from Cobb who had a shocking number of steals during his career.

Harrison: Urrrk! Gag! New Jersey mud? That’s disgusting!

Elmer: You bet! So I got myself some of that official mud, ran my fingers through it, squished it between my toes, and I’m thinking shoot, we have much better mud than that right here in the Yachats River. Not in the estuary, mind you. That’s too sandy. What we need here is a smooth, creamy sort of mud. And I knew exactly where to look for it.

Harrison: At a place you’re keeping strictly secret, I’ll bet.

Elmer: Oh, I wouldn’t divulge that secret for all the money in the Cayman Islands. I will tell you, however, that there are these mud slides the river otters make on the banks of the Yachats (see Fig. 3)…those little guys come careering down those slicks and shoot out across the river whooping and laughing like there’s no tomorrow. And that mud there is so smooth and creamy you could almost…

Figure 3. North American river otters, having a family squabble.**

Harrison: But, telling us about the slides…doesn’t that give away the secret location?

Elmer: Well, heck. If an otter can find them, how hard can it be?

Harrison: So, Elmer, you’re going to market this mud?

Elmer: Sure. Of course, it has to be scooped up and squished into jars—we’ll have expert scoopers and squishers. Then we’ll ship it to all the ballparks all over the world. Fortunately, the Yachats mud keeps really well, much longer than ordinary mud. And it’s not toxic or flammable, either. The mud in rivers back East can poison you or burst into flame from just a butterfly beating its wings. But not our mud.

Harrison: And what will you call your mud?

Elmer: “True Grit.”

Harrison: You’ll need to work on that, I think. Can I assume this is just the beginning of what will be a booming diversified corporation in Yachats? What do you have planned for future products?

Elmer: Oh, once we are well established in the ball rubbing business, my wife, Wilma, wants to go after the big bucks in the beauty world. Mud facial masks for cleaning the pores, detoxifying the skin, rejuvenation, and that kind of stuff. We’ll call it “My Youthful Radiance and Exuberance” and use the acronym—MYRE.

Harrison: Wow! From baseball to cosmetics! It is a brave new world, isn’t it? Do you suppose you might spin off into services for the mud wrestling industry?

Elmer: Nah, not enough profit potential. But we are going to enter the housing industry, building quality mud huts dirt cheap in those parts of the world where poverty is required.

Harrison: That’s a great idea! The poor have had a rough time lately.

Elmer: And we have another idea, one with a lot of potential, I think. We’ll build golems (with magnificent complexions) and tailor them to suit the purchasers. (See Fig. 4.) The Sasquatch Society of Sorcerers has assured us that, with a few incantations, the instructions can be installed in the golems quite easily. So we’re set to start cranking them out.

Figure 4. Golem, programmed to head a Fortune 500 corporation.***

Harrison: Amazing! They’ll be able to work 24/7 and won’t require breaks or vacations.

Elmer: Yep. And since money won’t mean anything to them, they won’t require payment. We’re thinking that the huge corporations will fall all over themselves to hire golems to be their high level executives. Imagine…a CEO who will work for nothing. A free Board of Directors. Think how much money Exxon or Walmart would save.

Harrison: But will a golem be able to perform a CEO’s job?

Elmer: Sure. No worries, there. A golem can be designed to play excellent golf.

Harrison: Wow! Ideas don’t get any bigger than this, Elmer.

* Photo copyrighted by Elizabeth Gates.
** Photo copyrighted by Dmitry Azovtsev.
*** Reproduction of the Prague Golem.

Next time: Wumpy calls a momentous press conference.

NOTE: In anticipation of the thousands of letters we would receive otherwise, Elmer points out that he won’t be taking mud from the otters’ actual playground, but rather from virtual slides, to some extent, nearby. No recreational facilities will be harmed in this blog. After all, a river otter without a mud slide is like a golem without a to-do list. Like a facial without a face. Like a village without a mud hut.*

* On the other hand, a mud hut without a village is susceptible to the Lion who comes along and huffs and puffs and blows the hut down and eats the entire extended family within (unless they have a ball of yarn handy for him to play with).

NOTE AGAIN: Eric Sallee and Dave Baldwin are full of gratitude for the uncountable riches the Rubbery Shrubbery blog has brought them.

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