I seem to recall that there were 60 new balls available to start a game but that was before every ball that hit anything was tossed aside or to a fan. Do they reuse some?
Do all the balls still get rubbed with Delaware River mud? By the umps?
I could google but you guys are more fun.
IIRC, the umps prepare 3-4 boxes of 24 each. So, in the neighborhood of 72-96 balls.
And, yes, all MLB baseballs are prepared using “blue mud”. I know you deliberately didn’t Google, but there is a fantastic SI article out there about the whole process. If it’s on the Web, it’s worth the search. Great read.