Spot duty for Rogers

ST. LOUIS -- Nate Robertson, the begoggled lefthanded pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, walked into the visitors' clubhouse here yesterday and saw reporters, six deep, encircling teammate Kenny Rogers.

"Hey, guys," he said playfully, "I'm the one pitching tomorrow. I was just in the interview room. You all just missed it."

Robertson picked up a bat, something he doesn't customarily have to use in the American League. "I'm going to hit, too," he said.

No use. The circle didn't budge. Under ordinary circumstances, Robertson might have made great copy -- the son of an Army master sergeant who at age 7 helped his dad cut fenceposts and haul firewood in his native Kansas (when his dad retired from the military, he began a new career building baseball fields. Not the drawing of blueprints, but the actual down-and-dirty construction).

But the Nate Robertson Story would have to wait for a later telling. Rogers remained the headliner, the day after the Tigers' 3-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 2 of the World Series. Not so much because he'd just pitched a third straight time in the postseason without allowing a run, placing himself in rarefied company. But because TV cameras had detected a brown smudge near the base of his left thumb in the first inning, exposing the 41-year-old as a potential baseball wrongdoer.

"I'm not going to chew yesterday's breakfast," gruffed Tigers manager Jim Leyland, who'd spent the run-up to Game 2 explaining why he'd allowed Game 1 starter Justin Verlander to pitch to Albert Pujols, who hit a home run.

"I had the Pujols situation the first day," Leyland said, "when you guys had a field day. And there was a situation yesterday that I guess was a little controversial. I'm not going to chew yesterday's breakfast and I'm not going to comment on it."

Rogers, however, despite a history of indelicate relations with the media, including last year's manhandling of a TV cameraman, took on all comers yesterday, fielding questions for the nearly 45 minutes the clubhouse was open before their workout.

Overnight, the scrutiny had gone beyond trying to identify the substance on his left hand, clearly visible, as Tigers first-base coach Andy Van Slyke drily observed, on "cameras that can zoom in on the hair of your nose." An Internet blog, Uni Watch, in a submission posted on the ESPN.com website, noted that Rogers wears a batting practice cap, which has a dark underbill, rather than the standard cap worn by teammates, which has a light gray underbill. The cap, of course, has been a favorite hiding place of pitchers using illegal substances on the ball.

"My cap?" Rogers said, his eyes flickering in surprise. "My head hurts with the other one. It shrinks. I get headaches. I don't think that's a big deal. There are a lot of things that aren't a big deal, but they're going to make it one. I'm comfortable in that hat. The other one, after you wear it a couple days, it shrinks up and it's a half a size smaller than it was. You keep it on you, you can't get it off. For me, it isn't comfortable. I try to be comfortable out there."

Rogers, it was clear, was comfortable sticking with his accounting of events from the night before, though he regretted saying that he had a "clump of dirt" on his hand. Just a poor choice of words, he said.

So, just what was on his hand?

"Mud, rosin, sweat, maybe some spit," Rogers said.

He rubs up the balls he throws in the bullpen while warming up, he said. That has always been a part of his routine.

"Usually, when I get done, there's not much on my hand," he said, "but there was a little bit more [Sunday night], I guess, than normal."

The game balls are never shiny new. An umpire's attendant rubs them in a special mud mixture, but not to the point where a pitcher's hands get dirty. The slightest smudge, after a foul ball, for example, and the umpire usually tosses the ball out and gives the pitcher a new one.

But that's Rogers's story and he's sticking to it. He also said he wiped his hand off because he saw on TV that they were talking about it, not because he was instructed to do so by plate umpire Alfonso Marquez.

"I think once I wiped the mud off, the last seven innings were very good," Rogers said, "but I'm sure that will be lost in translation with everything."

A soiled reputation? Rogers's passionate performances this postseason, in which he now has thrown 23 consecutive scoreless innings against three teams -- the Yankees, the Athletics, and Cardinals -- have done much to restore the shine to a career that had lost much of its luster. Rogers, remember, was booed at the All-Star Game last year in Detroit's Comerica Park, which he elected to come to despite being suspended for the cameraman smackown, by the same fans now embracing him as their own.

Cardinals manager Tony La Russa, a lawyer by training, was asked point-blank yesterday if he thought it was dirt on Rogers's hand.

"I don't believe it was dirt," he said. "Didn't look like dirt."

Rogers's teammate, Todd Jones, confessed yesterday there were times he had used pine tar to improve his grip on the ball. Had he been caught, Jones would have been ejected from the game and suspended 10 games. La Russa, by challenging Rogers after a couple of Cardinals hustled down from the clubhouse to tell him what was on the TV cameras, could have placed Rogers in peril of a similar punishment.

But La Russa, who admitting seeing video of previous Rogers outings in which he also had a substance on his hand, never asked the umpires to check the pitcher.

"I have a decision to make," he said, "and I decided that I was not going to be part of the BS where I was going to ask the umpire to go to the mound and undress the pitcher," he said. "Now what I was going to do? I alerted him. I said I hope it gets fixed; if it doesn't get fixed, then I'll take the next step."

It got fixed, La Russa said, and "we never hit the guy."

"Without belaboring it, that's the kind of philosophy of competing that I was taught, that's what I'm comfortable with. You either beat them or they beat you, and you try to deal on a day-to-day, individual basis on what [to do when] the BS comes up."

La Russa said he knows there are fans who believe he should have asked the umpire to go to the mound. There are players on his team, he suspects, who would have liked the same thing; he addressed it with the team yesterday, he said.

"I briefly explained where I was coming from and I said, 'Anybody who felt like I should have done different, then I disappointed you, but I went to sleep at night and looked in the mirror.'

"It's very possible there were guys that disagreed. [But] that's not the way we want to win."