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DELRAN, New Jersey (Reuters) - Somewhere along the mudflats of a Delaware River tributary in New Jersey is the spot where baseball's "magic mud" is mined, a location known only to a few and kept secret for decades.

The unique mud is rubbed on every new baseball used by Major League teams to remove the sheen, soften the seams and give pitchers a better grip.

"It definitely changes the way the ball feels," said Washington Nationals pitcher John Patterson. "If you get a new baseball, it's slick, it's hard to hold on to. If you put some mud on it, it gives you a better grip."

Before a game, Nationals ballboy Lamont Poteat "rubs up" several dozen baseballs by dabbing each one with a fingertip-full of mud and massaging it with both hands until its sheen is dulled.

The origins of the mud are swathed in folklore. Asked where it came from, Patterson said: "From the Mississippi." Other players believe it is taken from an Alabama swamp.

In fact, the mud is supplied by a husband-and-wife outfit in New Jersey but the exact site of their mudhole is a closely guarded secret.

The few outsiders taken to the mudhole have been blindfolded and sworn to secrecy.

"You'll never find it no matter how hard you look," said Jim Bintliff, owner of Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud.

Now every U.S. minor league team and some 25 colleges buy it, as well as a few teams in the Caribbean winter leagues.