MLB - 2006 World Series

[asleepathewheel]

Cards 1-0

you don't pitch to alberto with 1st base open and a man on 2nd.

[reismark]

Not too surprising. Any time you have a full week off in baseball, there's bound to be some rust.

If St. Louis goes home up 2-0, though, *then* I'll be surprised.

[SlowwHand]

Go 2-0 in first 2 games, in Detroit, and it's over.

ESPN calls it fresh, not rusty.

Favored and fresh, the Tigers were a unanimous pick to win the World Series. Easily. Well, their job just got harder after the Cardinals killed Detroit's buzz with a 7-2 victory in Game 1 on Saturday night.

[Imran Siddiqui]

So much for the Tigers are going to kick the Cards up and down the field.

Good job National League

[SlowwHand]

Bad boy Kenny Rogers on the mound for Dirtroit.

[asleepathewheel]

Ah the old pine tar thumb.

[SlowwHand]

He attacked a press guy here in Texas. It's why he's gone. Had a hissy fit on him.

[SlowwHand]

1-1

Card's threw a scare into them at end.

[asleepathewheel]

An interesting 9th, but the cards lose

1-1

and on to St. Louis.

[OzzyKP]

Well Kenny gave up a hit in the first inning with the "mysterious substance" on his hand, and then after he washed it off was near perfect the rest of the game. So if it was pine tar (and it sure looked like it to me) then it doesn't seem to have been a big factor in the game.

Not to say that in any way excuses this.

[OzzyKP]

Official line is it was dirt. But who knows..., sounds like a cover up to save face for the league. ****ing pro athletes, can't anyone play fair without cheating? Steroids, pine tar, corked bats, ****. Apparently ESPN said 60-70% of pitchers use pine tar at one point or another during a season. Ugh.

But it certainly isn't a problem unique to baseball, or unique to pro-sports even. Ethics seems to be a lost concept among all layers of society. Especially among those considered 'successful' it seems.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2006/news/story?id=2635538

DETROIT -- Kenny Rogers pitched eight scoreless innings Sunday, running his shutout streak this postseason to 23 innings, but that may be the least of the news about the 41-year-old left-hander coming out of Game 2 of the World Series.


Rogers

Early in the Tigers' 3-1 over the Cardinals that evened the Series at one game apiece, there appeared to be a dispute about something on Rogers' pitching hand. Television cameras caught a brownish substance, possibly dirt, on the palm of Rogers' left hand in the first inning, and showed it several times. By the second inning the substance was gone, and the pitcher's hand looked clean.

"It was a big clump of dirt," Rogers said after the game. "I didn't know it was there. They told me about, but it was no big deal."

When asked how he could have a big clump of dirt on his hand, Rogers replied, "It was dirt and rosin put together. That's what happens when you rub it up. … I just went and wiped if off. I didn't think it was an issue. After the first inning, it was fine. I felt I was pretty comfortable after that."

Umpires huddled before the start of the second inning, then talked to Cardinals manager Tony La Russa on the field. La Russa didn't appear happy about the explanation he got.

In the middle of the inning, three umps chatted with Tigers manager Jim Leyland near the third-base line.

"Tony said a couple of hitters complained the ball was doing some funny things," Leyland said during an in-game TV interview from the dugout. "Evidently, Tony brought it to their attention, but obviously it wasn't anything."

Umpire supervisor Steve Palermo told a TV reporter that whatever Rogers had on his hand needed to be cleaned off. The supervisor said it was nothing suspicious, and both managers were alerted.

"There was no formal request made about [Rogers] being inspected," Palermo said after the game. "There was a noticeable dirt mark on his pitching hand, and after the first inning, Alfonso Marquez, the home-plate umpire, asked him to remove the dirt so there wouldn't be any question about any controversy. And I think if you see the following innings, he pitched fine without the dirt."

"Dirt is not a foreign substance. That's the playing surface. … There was absolutely no detection that he put anything on the ball by any of the umpires. That rule regards if he deliberately put something on the ball to doctor the ball. There was an observation, and [Marquez] saw there was dirt, and he asked him to take it off."

"It was observed as dirt. [The umpires] have a pretty good idea what dirt is and what a foreign substance is."

After the substance was noticed, ESPN reviewed tapes of Rogers' pitching performances earlier in the postseason. The tapes revealed that, in starts against both the Yankees and Athletics, a similar-looking brown substance was spotted on Rogers' hand.

"The cold makes the ball so hard," Rogers said after the game. "There's no grip."

After the game, Rogers denied that his meeting with the umpires had anything to do with the substance on his hand.

When La Russa gave his in-game interview, he said the issue was not something he wanted to discuss.

A former major league pitcher offered his take on what a foreign substance can do to alter a pitcher's performance.

"When your hands get cold, you can't put spin on the ball, because the ball slips out of your hands," the pitcher said. "It also changes your release point. It changes the release point because the ball wants to come out of your hands sooner so it makes the ball go high, with less spin. So it's higher in the strike zone, or not even a strike, and with less movement. But once you use something that's a little stickier, like pine tar or chewing tobacco and gum, or hair gel, anything that makes your hand look sticky or feel sticky, it brings your release point back to normal. It also puts the same spin on the ball because you have a better grip.

"The problem is there's different substances that don't have a color to them and also don't wear off after awhile. Because when you throw more than 10-15 pitches in an inning, certain things start to wear away, and all of a sudden you're throwing your most important pitches with your least amount of stuff."

[Imran Siddiqui]

Err... you realize that "foriegn substances" applied by pitchers have been as much a part of baseball tradition as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", right? Unless you think that ethics was a lost concept to all layers of society back in the 30s and so on .

You can't get mad about cheating and baseball.. it's part of the game!

[SlowwHand]

The way you say it really brings out the disgusting part of it.

Doesn't matter now. Game is over.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Err... you realize that "foriegn substances" applied by pitchers have been as much a part of baseball tradition as "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", right? Unless you think that ethics was a lost concept to all layers of society back in the 30s and so on .

You can't get mad about cheating and baseball.. it's part of the game!

I'm certainly under no delusions that the past was somehow pure and sparkling and we've somehow fallen from that golden standard. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Nah... it's an integral part of the game. It may be 'wrong' in the technical sense, but the spirit of the game demands that sort of cheating .