World series contraversy

[yourmom]

Obviously im going to be biased since im from St. Louis, but doesn't this seem obvious to anyone else?

[wheelz33]

Obviously im going to be biased since im from St. Louis, but doesn't this seem obvious to anyone else?

yeah, but thats the things. its waaay to obvious. i dont think hes stupid enough to have an illegal substance just out there on his hand for everybody to see. but who knows. plus, even if it was, he still shut them down fo 7 innings after.

[Danny Hogan]

what exactly is a spitball supposed to do? a harder knuckleball ?

[byualum]

I don't think it was to throw a spitball...but if it's pine tar, it will allow him to grip the ball better, especially in cold weather. Better grip, better break, especially for a junk-baller like Rogers. Thing is, he was still un-hittable even after he cleaned up.

[Beta]

By having pinetar on the fingers, you can get a really good grip on the ball. So fastballs you can throw harder, sliders break faster, and curve balls have more spin on them.

Im no geologist...but Ive never seen pitchers mound dirt look like that...if wet it normally looks dark and clumpy in order to have the consistency to show up on skin...not look exactly like pine tar.

Guilty or innocent? I plead the fif.

[laxfan25]

Speaking from the land of the Tigers, it's obviously just dirt, dirt that Mr. Rogers was unaware of!
And the steroid test came back positive because of the cereal I ate this morning...
You wonder if they went easy on him because of the TV market - he's been a great story. (Kinda like the ref who tells you to get the mouthpiece in - watch the swearing - rather than penalizing with hard time.)
A game ejection and 10-game suspension seem very harsh!
Someone said that they went back and looked at previous games with the Yanks and A's and saw similar "dirt". It seems hard to believe that he would do something so blatant, but it sure looked fishy to me.
That said - Go Tigers!!

[Danny Hogan]

so saying that it is pinetar, is the palm the 'source' and he spreads it on his fingers between every pitch or is that part of his grip?

i'm not a baseball guy.

his hair is grey on the left

[mbuff]

Spitters are thrown by wetting or lubing up the tips of your fingers so there's no friction at the ball/finger contact area. This makes the ball drop sharply because there is no spin.

The picture on the right is clearly doctored. If the stuff was pine tar from picking up a bat or something, it was clearly not in an area that would affect grip on the ball. I have to give Rogers the benefit of doubt. He could have picked up some tape adhesive and then dirt stuck to it or moved a bat and transferred pine tar. Who knows but it does not look like it's in a grip area.

Edit: I found a site with good pitch pictures & you can see that the "dirt area" does not come into play. http://www.thecompletepitcher.com/pitching_grips.htm

[SLUDoubleDeuce]

The pic on the left is from game 3 of the ALCS and right is from last night. It does seem kinda fishy that he'd have the same spot of "dirt" on the same hand, in almost the identical shape and position. There are a couple good articles on espn.com today. From Jayson Stark's column:

We learned in journalism class that you should always start these tales with the person involved. So fine. We'll let Rogers give his fascinating version of these events.

What was on his hand? "A big clump of dirt," Rogers said.

And where did that clump come from? It was "dirt and rosin" he used to "rub up the baseball," and it was "left on my hand when I rubbed them up."

Yet even after warming up and then throwing 18 pitches to five different hitters in the first inning, he still "didn't know it was there." But then "they told me, and I took it off, and it wasn't a big deal."

Oh. So the umpires told him to "take it off"? Well, no, he claimed. He "just saw it." He "didn't know it was there until after the inning." So he simply "took it off, and it wasn't a big deal."

And that shot that the TV cameras showed of Rogers in deep second-inning conversation with plate ump Alfonso Marquez? "He just came and told me how much time I had between the innings."

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2006/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=2635633

Uni Watch had a good one too:

...take a look at his cap...Rogers prefers to wear a batting practice cap...The BP cap has a black underbill, instead of the Tigers' usual light gray. Now ask yourself, if you wanted to take a foreign substance out to the mound with you, wouldn't it be easier to hide it against a black background than a gray one?

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=lukas/061023

I'm not sure he was using pine tar or whatever, but I sure don't believe him when he says he didn't know it was there. He is someone who makes a living off of his left hand, so I tend to believe he would know exactly what was going on with it at any given time. A pitcher can be "disabled" by a blister a tiny cut, so you think a glob of goop covering a good portion of your palm would really mess with your pitches (and maybe in a good way )

[byualum]

so saying that it is pinetar, is the palm the 'source' and he spreads it on his fingers between every pitch or is that part of his grip?

i'm not a baseball guy.

his hair is grey on the left

Take your 1st and 2nd fingers and rub them against the fleshy part of the palm, just below your thumb. If the pine tar is there, on the thumb, it's easy to transfer it onto the 1st and 2nd fingers, the ones that grip the ball when pitching. Very subtle, looks like your just making a fist...but really you're cheating.

[Campbell]

I don't think it was to throw a spitball...but if it's pine tar, it will allow him to grip the ball better, especially in cold weather. Better grip, better break, especially for a junk-baller like Rogers. Thing is, he was still un-hittable even after he cleaned up.

I'm not much of a baseball person either, but does all of it really matter? If he is just getting better grip? I could see disallowing sanding the ball or something else that changes the ball, but something that just increases his grip seems pretty minor.

[laxfan25]

I agree about the doctoring of the pciture on the right - Photoshop is a fun tool! If there was some type of sticky substance on the meat of his palm, it would be ideally located to drop his finger tips onto, in order to improve his grip on the ball.
A guy I work with said that he had a callus problem one time and would rub pine tar on it, which would leave a discoloration perhaps that might be waht was occuring.
Kudos to Tony LaRussa for not making a big deal of it. He and Jim Leyland are very close. Tony had Leyland on his bench for many years, until JL decided to get back into the lead role.

[byualum]

I don't think it was to throw a spitball...but if it's pine tar, it will allow him to grip the ball better, especially in cold weather. Better grip, better break, especially for a junk-baller like Rogers. Thing is, he was still un-hittable even after he cleaned up.

I'm not much of a baseball person either, but does all of it really matter? If he is just getting better grip? I could see disallowing sanding the ball or something else that changes the ball, but something that just increases his grip seems pretty minor.

Actually in cold weather it is a pretty big deal. When the weather turns cold both the ball and the skin become pretty slick. Growing up in Colorado and spending four years covering the Rockies for a local TV station, pine tar is widely used by pitchers when the come to Colorado for early games in April when the temps are in the 40s.

Plus, I can't stand Leyland...I wish Rogers would have been tossed.

[ZagGrad]

I know this is minimal, but isn't there some type of condensation/perspiration that remains on the hand when it is quickly "warmed up" when blown into on cold days? Just something to think about.

I am not a Rogers fan by any means, but so far, I believe him. If he would have gone the whole game with the gunk on his hand, I would think otherwise. This whole thing is suspicious though.

[beckner11]

Being from St. Louis and a huge Cardinals fan I can't go without throwing my 2 cents in:
First off, I hate Rogers with a passion. He's a great pitcher but has an aweful temper and has no clue how to control it either. I really like Leyland though. Anyway, it was blantent that Rogers is lying about not knowing that he had something on his hand based of the basic instance where the umpires told him to get rid of it than he said that no one said anything to him. Umpires are under more pressure than anyone so there is no reason they would lie and say they told him to take it off when they didn't. With that being said, he still killed the Cards even after he took it off so that can't be used as an excuse the whole game.

Now if Tony had done the right thing for his team and said something right away then Rogers wouldn't and shouldn't have even been in the game anymore anyway. Oh well, series shifts back to StL and we're already won more games than anyone expected us to!