Hot topic isn't getting left out in the cold
ST. LOUIS -- I think I could have solved this Kenny Rogers controversy before it started.
It was cold on Sunday night in Detroit, correct? I mean cooooooold. Brrrrrrr! We all saw the TV shots of the bundled-up fans. It was not exactly good baseball weather.
Because of the extreme cold, the baseball was hard to grip. We know that pine tar can help you get a grip. Batters are allowed to wipe their bat handles with a pine tar rag. Batters may wear batting gloves and goop them up with pine tar. So to grip the ball better, why shouldn't pitchers be allowed to do something?
In adverse conditions such as the ones in Detroit Sunday night, the umpires should bring the managers and pitchers together and say, "Tonight, you pitchers will be allowed to employ pine tar in order to facilitate your getting a decent grip on the ball." Period. End of story.
It's not as if pine tar makes the ball do anything funny. It's not as if pine tar adds 5 miles per hour to a fastball. Contrary to some reports, the Cardinals weren't complaining that the ball was acting weird during that first inning. Manager Tony La Russa made that clear. Absent the evidence so well displayed by the Fox television cameras, life would have gone on.
We all know Rogers got caught doing something funky. His explanation was shaky. Dirt? Please. That wasn't dirt. And you wonder how smart he is if he didn't realize the camera would pick up something that far out of line at the base of his thumb.
But it was jaywalking and no more. I don't think Rogers would have had any problem giving whatever it was to Jeff Weaver, his St. Louis counterpart. It was cooooooold, remember? Brrrrrrr!
No one came out of this looking bigger and better than La Russa. The man was at his heartfelt best the day after as he explained why he took the simple, rather than the letter-of-the-law, approach to the situation.
"There's a line, I think, that defines the competition," he said. "And you can sneak over that line, because we're all fighting for the edge. I always think, 'Does it go to the point of abuse?' And that's where you start snapping.
"I also know that pitchers -- I was going to say 'routinely,' but that may be too strong, because I don't know enough -- pitchers use some sticky stuff to get a better grip from the first throw in spring training to the last side [session] they're going to throw in the World Series. Just because there's a little something that they're using to get a better grip, that doesn't cross the line, you know?"
La Russa's decision was to get Rogers to stop and then proceed with the game. And, as he pointed out and everyone has to realize, his batters had no more success against the un-gooped hand over innings 2 through 8 than they did against the gooped hand in inning 1.
While praising La Russa for taking the high road, I would be neglectful not to mention that there also could have been a highly practical reason for doing so. As
"Everybody cheats," Dibble said. Listening to the former pitcher explain such methods as a catcher roughing up a ball on his shin guards or an infielder using the raised eyelets on his glove to gouge a baseball, one was left with the inescapable conclusion that no game ever is played without doctored baseballs at some point.
And who should turn up as an expert witness on ESPN's "Cold Pizza" yesterday but the impish Gaylord Perry? Naw, the Hall of Famer said, messing around with the baseball isn't "cheating," per se. "It's just 'taking advantage,"' he explained. No one knows better.
As cheating goes, this Rogers business was low grade. You want cheating? I'll give you cheating.
I'm reading a fascinating book entitled "The Echoing Green." It is the startling story of the 1951 New York Giants, who on July 20 of that season, began stealing rival catchers' signs from their center field offices at the Polo Grounds by using a telescope belonging to utility infielder Hank Schenz.
Coach Herman Franks was stationed in dead center for every game, relaying the signs via a buzzer system installed in their bullpen, whereupon the signs would be flashed by backup catcher Sal Yvars to the batter. The Giants, who trailed the Dodgers by 13 games Aug. 11, won 37 of their last 44, and, yes, the stealing was going on right to the last at-bat of the season, when Bobby Thomson won the pennant with the most famous home run in baseball history.
Now that's cheating.
I grew up a passionate Giants fan, and I must tell you it is a difficult book to read.
Stealing signs in that manner is the ultimate no-no. To me, that's far worse than the use of steroids, as odious as that practice may be. It's worse than doctoring a baseball or corking a bat. It violates every concept of fair play, if only because it's completely one-sided. Think about it: The other side can't cheat back.
L'Affaire Rogers is an amusing subplot to this World Series; nothing more. I can work up an outrage about phantom double plays or first basemen who get away with receiving an infielder's throw with neither foot anywhere near the bag (old buddy Kevin Millar hasn't made a legitimate putout in about five years) or a second base umpire honoring some lame code by ringing up an obviously safe base stealer just because the catcher's throw was in the vicinity than I can about a pitcher trying to get a grip on the baseball when he's forced to perform in Arctic conditions.
What we learned through all of it was that Tony La Russa truly gets it. "I said, 'I don't like this stuff; get it fixed,"' he said. "It got fixed, in my opinion, and we never hit the guy."
If virtue is truly its own reward, the Cardinals will have another chance Saturday. If La Russa thinks something's out of order a second time, I think we've seen the last of Mr. Nice Guy, no matter how cooooooold it is.
