I’m never certain where sports threads should go, but baseball is probably the sport most closely resembling art, so into CS it goes:
In the wake of yet another dominating performance by Kenny Rogers, it appears he was engaging in some illegal activity out on the mound. Early in the game, St. Louis management told the umpiring staff that their players had been noticing some odd movement on Rogers’ pitches. Video replays show he has what appears to be pine tar on his pitching hand in the first inning. Presumably after receiving warning from his teammates, he disappeared into the locker room and reappeared sans pine tar. Both Rogers and the umps are being particularly elusive about the incident in post-game interviews. It seems to me that Rogers naturally doesn’t want to get caught cheating in the World Series and Major League Baseball would rather play dumb than further tarnish its image.
Keep in mind this is all my own perspective on the matter. I’m just sayin’, videos show more pine tar-looking stuff on Rogers’ hand in his games in the division series and leage championship series. The man is a cheater. And I say that as a Tigers fan (a casual one). He was still able to pitch eight shutout innings without the pine tar. It’s a shame he had to stoop to that level in the freakin’ World Series.
Pretty clear from here (admittedly, as a Cardinal fan.) He was doctoring the ball the entire night.
Pudge kept throwing balls out of play before the ump could check them, including after Spiezio’s foul tip in the 6th, when he LUNGED for the ball when it kicked back near the ump. Add in the fact that he wouldn’t take his glove off in the dugout, kept playing with the back of his hat and was very careful to keep his glove facing pocket-up when going to or leaving the mound and I will guarantee he was doctoring the ball.
He may have washed it off his hand, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have any still on him. Would be fairly trivial to hide it on a dark hat, or inside a black fielder’s glove.
He also could have had any other number of substances rubbed into his uniform for the purposes of messing with the ball.
I’m not sure anybody has a ‘reputation’ for doing that anymore. There have been instances where people were caught doing it, but Rogers hasn’t been accused of it before that I’m aware of. If he’d been caught before, I’m sure the news would be mentioning it.
No one’s really had a reputation for doctoring the ball since Gaylord Perry retired. It still happens from time to time, though.
Back in 2004, then-Cardinals reliever Julian Tavarez got suspended 10 games for supposedly having pine tar on his hat (it was actually dirt.) The Pirates accused him of putting it on the ball, and instead of the correct call (making him replace the hat) he got run from the game and suspended.
John Kruk and Steve Phillips called him out on it, especially after his claim that the umpire was talking to him about pace-of-game rather than the mysterious spot.
That seems to be the give-away: The umps’ and Rogers’ stories don’t add up. Well, that and the videos that show “dirt” on his pitching hand in his previous two games. As for the speculation that he played with his hat too much and conspicuously handled his glove, I haven’t seen enough of his mannerisms to know that those were anything out of the ordinary. It’d take some seriously balls to continue to doctor the ball after being warned not to do so.
ESPN’s main page now has a side-by-side comparison of Rogers’ hand during the ALCS and World Series, and they’ve also pointed out that Rogers’ version of what happened is different from his manager’s. If the Cardinals weren’t curious about this last night, I bet the Yankees and A’s are now.
As I said in the other baseball thread, so what if he was doctoring the ball? Cheating in baseball has a long history and this kind of cheating, at least, is accepted if you can get away with it.
I’m not really sure what that means, asterion. It’s against the rules and has been for decades. In what was is it tolerated “if you can get away with it?”
Here’s a dumb question- what would pine tar do? Would it allow him to keep a better grip on the ball or something, and if so, what could the result be- a faster pitch? Better break on the curve?
Asking because I really don’t know, not trying to be a snark.
His “Horrible postseason career” consisted of 20 innings, some of which happened ten years ago. It’s a meaningless data sample, and his last three starts aren’t much of a data sample, either. He might go out and get pounded in Game 6.
Every time a pitcher gets really hot, especially if he’s not a fastball pitcher, the losing side whines about how he’s doctoring the ball.
In any event, two facts stand out to me:
Whatever Rogers had on his hand was gone after the first inning, and the first inning was the worst inning he pitched. If he was doctoring the ball he was doing a pretty terrible job of it.
It didn’t appear to me that Rogers’ pitches were moving in any sort of unusual way. He got the Cardinals out mainly by locating his pitches really well, low in the strike zone and away on righthanded hitters. And the breaks went his way - his defense made several good plays on well hit balls and the Cardinal hitters weren’t having very good at bats, for the most part. What I didn’t see were pitches that took amazing dives or sideways breaks. Granted, I wasn’t standing at the plate, but Rogers’s location was phenomenal, and doctoring the ball doesn’t give you location.
The media’s doing a terrible job covering this, replying mostly on supposition and accusation. Gene Wojciechowski’s column on espn.com is particularly awful; it’s confusing, scattered, picks quotes at random to illustrate nonexistent points, and suggests that Tony LaRussa is in on some sort of conspiracy to hide Rogers’s cheating - you know, *the Tony LaRussa who manages the other team. * Riiiight.