Openly Cheating in the World Series

After seeing the pine tar on Detroit Tiger pitcher Kenny Rogers' hand, someone I know stopped watching this year's World Series. Baltimore Sun sportswriter Peter Schmuck explains:

Was Kenny Rogers flouting the rules of baseball if he had pine tar or some other dark, sticky substance on the palm of his left hand in the early innings of a strong Game 2 performance at Comerica Park?

The rule book would answer clearly in the affirmative, and the prescribed punishment would have been a suspension if St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa had asked the umpires to check Rogers' hand and they had, indeed, found something other than infield dirt.

La Russa chose instead to send a message to the Tigers' postseason hero through the umpiring crew:

Whatever you're doing, stop doing it.

The decision not to make a federal case out of it put La Russa on the hot seat in St. Louis, because he might have passed up an opportunity to get Rogers out of a game he absolutely dominated for eight innings. But the fact that La Russa had no appetite for gamesmanship in that situation might have been because he knows something you don't want to know.

There is an acceptable level of rule-bending in major league baseball that is largely overlooked because it is almost universal.

Tigers closer Todd Jones came right out and admitted yesterday that he has - in the past - used a little pine tar to improve his grip on the baseball under certain conditions. I guess if you're going to admit to substance abuse at the World Series, this probably is the best way to do it, but Jones chose his words just carefully enough to shed some light on the situation without incriminating anyone.

"I had a guy I played with go to another team," Jones said. "He came back and said, 'If you guys check me [for pine tar], I'm going to drill every one of you because you didn't mind it when I was here.'"

La Russa said during yesterday's news conference at Busch Stadium that "pitchers use some kind of sticky stuff to get a better grip from the first day in spring training to the last side session of the World Series." And even though he claimed the Cardinals' coaching staff had seen video evidence that Rogers might have had sticky fingers in a couple of earlier outings, La Russa said he didn't consider it "over the line."

In short, there is cheating and then there is cheating, a distinction that seems harmless enough when a pitcher is just trying to get a better grip on a cold night, but represents the kind of moral relativism that can justify just about anything.