Kenny Rogers - Using Pine Tar?

[gusman]

I am looking at other message boards and on espn and people are making a huge deal out of this. Rogers said it was a clump of dirt, but in no way did that look like dirt

[b-diddy]

big deal/little deal.

cards picked up on it right away, so no affect on this game, and A and yanks didnt pick up on it either, so he didnt cheat those games.

but he did try to cheat, it appears. pretty big deal. i hope he's allowed to pitch in game 6.

[Matt]

is it true, that this "clump of dirt" was captured on video during his games vs. the Yankees and A's?

btw, for the record, what exactly does pine tar do to give a pitcher the advantage?

[Black Dynamite]

btw, for the record, what exactly does pine tar do to give a pitcher the advantage?

better grip.

but he won't be banned from playing. Also after they removed it he still pitched like a mad man. So I doubt it becomes an issue if he pitches good in his next start. Just clinging to more news by espn i think.

[bangpow]

The league official even said it was no big deal, so whatever.

[geerussell]

At least Kenny isn't the only one, Todd Jones weighs in on pine tar from last year:

I pitched in Denver for two years, and at a mile above sea level, I used pine tar every time I pitched at home. My thinking was that I was more than 5,000 feet in the air and was entitled to at least do that much. I never thought one thing about it. Was it cheating? My numbers say no, given that my career ERA at Coors Field is 7.64 in 59 games. It's very dry in Denver, and that makes the baseball slippery. I needed the tar to hold onto the ball. I didn't want the ball to slip and hit a hitter. At least, that was my thinking. I never considered it cheating; I was breaking even.

Last week in Anaheim, the Nationals asked that the glove of Angels reliever Brendan Donnelly be checked before he threw a pitch, and he subsequently was ejected for having pine tar in it. Sounds like an inside job to me, and perhaps Frank Robinson was tipped off. You can draw your own conclusions. I have played with guys who scuffed or used pine tar and then we've been on different teams the next year. I have been told in so many words that if a former teammate gets checked, then that player will retaliate. To me, that means, "Hey man, you didn't mind me scuffing or using pine tar when we were teammates, so don't rat me out now." And it's left alone on almost every occasion.

I've been around pitching coaches who teach how to scuff or use pine tar. There's actually an art to scuffing, and there are two fatal errors guys make. The first: They scuff too often. To get away with scuffing, you have to know when to do it. Coaches and older players who have been around a long time know when they see a scuffed ball. So you have to pick your spots. You use it when it's a big part of the game and hope to take advantage of the small window of opportunity before the other team is tipped off. The umpire usually doesn't check the pitcher until the opposing manager asks him to.

The other mistake is making the scuff too big. Don't dig a hole in the side of the ball; just lightly brush the sandpaper across the side. If you want the ball to break left, leave the scuff mark on the right side.

Now that I've told you how to scuff, the question becomes: How much can players get away with in their own clubhouses? It's funny; pine tar is no big deal to players. Everybody uses pine tar. Catchers put in on their shinguards. Infielders put it in the pockets of their gloves so the ball will stick in there. It's almost a basic part of the game. Sandpaper and Vaseline, however, are looked at as cheating. They give pitchers too much of an advantage.

For hitters, boning bats in the bathroom is not considered cheating. Corking, however, is. Guys bone their bats in broad daylight. When a guy corks, he does it in private. If you cork and word gets out, it's bad news. You're a marked man.

Though there might be a difference between scuffing and using pine tar, technically speaking, they're both against the letter of the rulebook. So here's the thing: If you get caught, don't overreact. Have a good time with it until you get caught.

So the decision to cheat is up to you. Kind of like life, huh?

[H1Man]

I still can't decide if that was actually pine tar or if was just a clump of dirt, as Kenny says it is.

On one hand, I can't believe that anybody would be that stupid to have pine tar in such a visible place. And I find it even harder to believe that he used pine tar for his earlier two starts and it went unnoticed, yet they were all over him today. But on the other hand, if it really is dirt, how can it be in the same general location for 3 games? And why did the explanations differ so much with regards to whether the umpires actually asked Rogers to remove that substance?

Either way, he performed just as well if not better once he wiped it off his hands. So it shouldn't have turned into such a big deal.

[Glenn]

ALCS on the left, last night on the right

[Glenn]

Well the Kornheisers of the world got what they wanted, a storyline.

This thing is already getting overdone, and it's only hours afte the game.

It's going to be all pinetar, all the time, for the next few days.

Too bad for Kenny. He was successfully rebuilding his image and now all those old incidents are going to pop back up in the SportsCenter feature of the day.

I sort of think he would have been better off not completely lying about this one, though.

It's fine if you lie and say it's dirt if no one can prove otherwise, I suppose. But he's saying that no umpire asked him to remove anything from his hand, in fact, none of them said anything about his hand. There are already a bunch of accounts that contradict that, including the ump that is chief of the crew.

Now he looks like a cheater and a liar.

[MoTown]

I'm torn on this - maybe it was pinetar, but it wasn't proven so let it go. Pinetar is technically cheating, but 1) it was on a place where the ball doesn't touch. If he was rubbing it on the ball, you would have seen it. 2)He wasn't hiding it at all. If he wanted to hide the pinetar, he would have put it in his glove, where it is near impossible to see. 3) St. Louis fans are whiners. 4) 7 scoreless innings afterwards. 5) The umpire and the opposing pitcher will touch the same balls at some point - did they notice it then?