First you claim that Kenny Rogers is using Pine Tar, and some guy will end up by saying that the Sainted Gaylord Perry had been capable of using some mysterious, nefarious accretion on his baseball from time to time.

Gaylord Perry... that guy sure knew how ta get into batters heads... his autobiography was titled Me and the Spitter.... most of the time they couldn't find any substance

Sticky situation: what, exactly, is cheating?
Sporting News, The, July 1, 2005 by Todd Jones
Baseball rules clearly state that you cannot use any foreign substance on the baseball to gain an advantage--no pine tar, Vaseline, sandpaper, shaving cream, whatever. The rules also say that hitters cannot doctor their bats to give them an advantage.

Here is an entertaining and great rundown of the incident. Kinda funny. Kinda sad.



The point isn't whether it is believable that a pitcher wouldn't notice a huge clump of dirt (if it was that) on his pitching hand. The point isn't even about Kenny Rogers, whose left hand was brilliant both clean and dirty. He's a secondary story here.
The point is that faced with suspicion, controversy and potential scandal, Major League Baseball once again did what it always seems to do – covered its eyes, fell back on its history of silence and hoped it would all go away, unwilling to find out what, if anything, was going on.


Caught looking - MLB - Yahoo! Sports

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"Quite simply captain, I examined the problem from all angles, and it was plainly hopeless. Logic informed me that under the circumstances, the only logical action would have to be one of desperation. Logical decision, logically arrived at." -- Spock

If anybody has follow Bill James (the Sabermetrics guy from "moneyball"), he argues that the "closer" role in baseball tends to make the closer look better than he is and also mis-uses his talents.

Basically, any decent pitcher thrown into the game in the 9th inning with at least a 2 run lead will end up winning 95% of the time. So, the argument goes, why would you waste one of your best pitchers in that situation?

Maybe Jones is overrated. He has put us in a couple really dangerous spots in the postseason so far.

I thought Jimmy's coments last night was funny... he said Jones will be going thru PFP (pitchers fielding practice) before he gets on the bus tonight

I caught that, too. Leyland was NOT pleased with that play. He rarely will get sarcastic like that. Translation: "That could have cost us the ballgame and quite possibly the Series.

more on kenny rogers' poopy hands... an awesome take (at least for a relative novice like me)

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200....rogers/1.html

First of all, common Prof, if you're going to link to an article, you've got to link to the first page. That's bush league man. You're better than that.

Secondly, is it just me, or does that "bullpen coach" sound mildly retarded? I mean, the guy repeated himself about 50 times! He just kept saying the same things over and over again. It was painful to read.

It was hard to stay focused on the article. All I could think about was wanting to give the poor guy a hug and say "Its ok. We get it. He used Pine Tar, not shaving cream or suntan lotion. You can stop talking now."

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Hahaha... sorry jammer, got a little excited. All this is cheating stuff is way new to me, especially the fact that it's not new or uncommon in the slightest. I kind of thought the details of how they do the stuff, and how Kenny might have been a bit sloppy with the junk seemed kind of interesting.

It also seemed odd and to me entertaining that the whole thing consisted of nothing but quotations. I'd never seen that before.

oh yeah, but apologies for the pain.