Detroit Tigers - cheaters. True or False?

[Savage Beatings]

In essence, it is cheating, but there isn't a rule against using this particular substance.....like there is a written rule that pitcher's can't use pine tar or sandpaper, or files, or etc....

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure the rule is "no foreign substance" regardless of whether it is specifically named.

[twiley]

I'm pretty sure the rule is "no foreign substance" regardless of whether it is specifically named.

 

You would be correct.

[chester]

Why do you think I'm fishing? You can clearly see the same thing here: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2006...tory?id=2635538

 

The one picture is from the ALCS, game 3. As I recall it wasn't raining. And even if it was, it would be a mighty large coincidence that he happened to have dirt in the same place, wouldn't you say?

 

 

I guess I'm playing devil's advocate,too, because I really don't care.

But if you are somebody that pitches for a living, you probably have a routine before each pitch, and if it involves rubbing the ball, you'd probably rub it in the exact place on your hand each time.

 

(I know this because my GF likes to rub my ball with the same spot on her...oh never mind)

[gilthorp]

I'm pretty sure the rule is "no foreign substance" regardless of whether it is specifically named.

 

 

 

Well, then I guess it was just dirt that got washed off. Because if it was a foreign substance, he should have gotten the ole heave ho.

[cre8tiff]

Well, then I guess it was just dirt that got washed off. Because if it was a foreign substance, he should have gotten the ole heave ho.

 

 

Not true, apparently LaRussa needed to request and inspection of Rogers' hand, which he did not. Thus the umpires never "inspected" it officially. So basically LaRussa let Rogers get away with it.

 

So who is more guilty, the criminal, or the cop that lets him get away with it because he works for his buddy?

[Furd]

I think a far more damning quesiton is why LaRusaa DIDN'T make a stink about it. It seems his feelings about his buddy overshadow his will to win a critical World Series game. That is unacceptable, and I wish people would start asking questions about THAT, instead of the whole did he or didn't he question.

 

 

 

Because his guys do it too.

 

Read this: Coach says pitchers often use foreign substances

 

"I bet Tony La Russa's pitchers are mad at him for saying anything, because a lot of guys do it, and I'd be surprise if there's a whole staff of guys who don't do it. In fact, I'd say a majority of guys use one of the three -- shaving cream, suntan lotion or pine tar. They can't like him ratting out the other team when everyone does it. Maybe he had to say something because it's the World Series, it's on TV and he probably has to answer to his owner.

 

"But you'll notice he didn't continue to talk about it, and he instructed his guys not to talk about it. They probably have no interest in catching Rogers because if they do then the umpire is looking at everyone.''

Edited October 23, 2006 by Furd

[Dr. Sacrebleu]

Soooooo, when Hugh1 brings up cheating in baseball, everyone is like "sure dude, everybody cheats", "bra', cheating is part of all sports" "no biggie"

yet when the brie eating, previously gauloise smoking, unwashed frenchman accuses Lance Armstrong of cheating everyone's like "how dare you impune our fine athletes".

 

Interesting

 

Not that I'm obsessed or anything....

[Pope Flick]

Yes, you are obsessed. I said expulsion, regardless. But there's a certain acception of 'cheating' in this sport(baseball), as long as you can march out to said player and bust him on the spot with the cheating item.

 

Your smelly sport has institutionalized cheating that uses science just not to cheat, but cheat the ability to catch it. Who's a worse cheater: a blood doper who goes through his routine for weeks to systematically get away with it or a guy who slaps pine tar on his hand, sticks an emory board in his pocket or layers vaseline on his cap then marches in front of a stadium full of people with that item on him and can get busted with it at the request of a simple inspection?

 

And it's not like Armstrong failed one test out of 1000's. He failed ZERO out of over a thousand, after recovring from near-terminal ball cancer.

 

Come to think of it, maybe that's why your country can't relate to him: he fights for his family jewels.

Edited October 23, 2006 by Pope Flick

[whitem0nkey]

According to rule 8.02(a)(2), (3), (4) and (5), the pitcher shall not:

(2) expectorate on the ball, either hand or his glove;

(3) rub the ball on his glove, person or clothing;

(4) apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball; [or]

(5) deface the ball in any manner.

 

technically he did not break any rules.

 

he did not spit or cough at the ball (2)

he did not apply any foreign substance on the ball (4), it was on his hand.

he did not rub the ball he held it and threw it. (3)

and he did not deface the ball. (5)

 

you can lawyer your way to say he did not cheat.

 

 

also he was doing this in the regular season.

 

there is a pic showing him Vs. my sox - Tigers vs. White Sox, July 20, 2006.

Edited October 23, 2006 by whitem0nkey

[Dr. Sacrebleu]

Yes, you are obsessed. I said expulsion, regardless. But there's a certain acception of 'cheating' in this sport(baseball), as long as you can march out to said player and bust him on the spot with the cheating item.

 

Your smelly sport has institutionalized cheating that uses science just not to cheat, but cheat the ability to catch it. Who's a worse cheater: a blood doper who goes through his routine for weeks to systematically get away with it or a guy who slaps pine tar on his hand, sticks an emory board in his pocket or layers vaseline on his cap then marches in front of a stadium full of people with that item on him and can get busted with it at the request of a simple inspection?

 

And it's not like Armstrong failed one test out of 1000's. He failed ZERO out of over a thousand, after recovring from near-terminal ball cancer.

 

Come to think of it, maybe that's why your country can't relate to him: he fights for his family jewels.

 

 

I was just making a funny.

And in a weird way I agree with you. Because baseball is such a story telling sport, we actually embrace the scoundrel for the sake of a good yarn. But quite honestly, the level of cheating is exactly the same, the difference is that injecting oneself with poison for the sake of winning is really really distatsteful to us.

But at the end of the day, those are both exactly the same cheating.

And by the way, as Az posted a few weeks ago, cycling also had a great menagerie of colourful scoundrels. It's the needle that rubs us the wrong way.

 

And I hate to even mention it, but Armstrong DID in fact fail an EPO test. The test was shameless, and never should have been conducted, and rightfully was not recognized as valid because of the methodology. A little like, oh I don't know, the subject of this whole thread You are all willing to judge Rogers' guilt from the most tangential evidence, and yet a positive test for EPO by Armstrong because it was conducted outside of the established rules doesn't even exist in your minds [for the record, I have never used this as 'proof' of hi guilt]

[wiegie]

You are all willing to judge Rogers' guilt from the most tangential evidence,

ok, I have sat quietly by just observing this thread until now... but that was not tangential evidence

 

What happened last night would be the equivalent of the video crew at the Tour de France filming a cyclist injecting himself with some fluid only to have the tour officials come along and say, "this is no big deal, it was just saline solution". And then when the film crew asked "did you inspect the syringe to make sure it was only salt-water?" the official responded with "no, but it looked like saline solution to us."

[Pope Flick]

I was just making a funny.

And in a weird way I agree with you. Because baseball is such a story telling sport, we actually embrace the scoundrel for the sake of a good yarn. But quite honestly, the level of cheating is exactly the same, the difference is that injecting oneself with poison for the sake of winning is really really distatsteful to us.

But at the end of the day, those are both exactly the same cheating.

 

 

 

Well, on one level cheating is cheating so this'll be my last post in something that will become and argument I cannot win.

 

But injecting yourself with poison in private and doing so to circumvent drug tests is NOT the same as deciding to cheat, then sucking it up and walking out in front of a national audience, thousands in the stands and the ability to be EXPOSED at the request of the other team. That is NOT the same; it takes more chutzpah/less brains for sure. I guess that's where the 'yarn' part comes in.

[chiefjay]

ok, I have sat quietly by just observing this thread until now... but that was not tangential evidence

 

What happened last night would be the equivalent of the video crew at the Tour de France filming a cyclist injecting himself with some fluid only to have the tour officials come along and say, "this is no big deal, it was just saline solution". And then when the film crew asked "did you inspect the syringe to make sure it was only salt-water?" the official responded with "no, but it looked like saline solution to us."

 

 

Good one Sqwiegie, good one.

[ChuckB]

Good one Sqwiegie, good one.

 

 

 

 

 

[ChuckB]

Oh and I don't care what it takes as long as I get my bottle of Goose from Wiegie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Puddy]

Let me just say for the record that I'm really getting excited about tasting some beer from a brewery I've never even heard of. I talked to a guy I work with who grew up in St. Louis and he assured me that Schlalfy's (or however the hell you spell it) is good stuff.

 

Please try and have it delivered by Mid-November as I plan on taking some PTO from work and that will be a good time to sample them.

[Hugh 0ne]

he did not apply any foreign substance on the ball (4), it was on his hand.

 

 

My ass. I saw pictures where you clearly saw the substance on the ball. So there goes your argument. Anything else you'd like to add?

[Hugh 0ne]

Let me just say for the record that I'm really getting excited about tasting some beer from a brewery I've never even heard of. I talked to a guy I work with who grew up in St. Louis and he assured me that Schlalfy's (or however the hell you spell it) is good stuff.

 

Please try and have it delivered by Mid-November as I plan on taking some PTO from work and that will be a good time to sample them.

 

 

In light of the circumstances, since it is obvious that Rogers is a cheater, and the Tigers should be eliminated from the playoffs, I think the Cards fans win this bet by default. JMHO.

 

[whisper]wiegie, if this works, I'll PM you my address[/whisper]

[twiley]

Let me just say for the record that I'm really getting excited about tasting some beer from a brewery I've never even heard of. I talked to a guy I work with who grew up in St. Louis and he assured me that Schlalfy's (or however the hell you spell it) is good stuff.

 

Please try and have it delivered by Mid-November as I plan on taking some PTO from work and that will be a good time to sample them.

 

Whatever you say cheater.

[cre8tiff]

Great article by Jeff Gordon of the STL Post-Dispatch:

Of course, this fair-minded view of blatant cheating left reporters with many questions. Did he go easy on Rogers because of his friendship with Tigers manager Jim Leyland?

 

“That was actually asked over the phone this morning by a guy that used to be my friend,” La Russa told reporters, drawing some nervous laughter. “If somebody tells me that was what I was thinking, I would take that as a personal insult.”

 

He insists he would never put a friendship ahead of his team.

 

“This isn’t about friends,” La Russa said. “This is about Tigers and Cardinals. If somebody would accuse me of that, I would get very upset and confrontational.”

 

So why did he go easy in Rogers? La Russa fleshed out his decision -– and made lots of sense doing so.

 

 

* Pitchers routinely use sticky substances to improve their grip. A former major league pitcher laughed at Rogers’ “clump of dirt” explanation Monday, but admitted that he used to grip his sticky, pine-tarred bat between innings on cold nights.

 

La Russa assured reporters that pitchers routinely use sticky substances from the first day of spring training to the end of the World Series.

 

 

* La Russa believes, to a degree, in the adage that you aren’t competing if you’re not cheating.

 

“There’s a line that defines competition,” he said. “You can sneak over the line because we all go for an edge. When you go far, it’s abuse.”

 

 

* The Skipper insists that when he sees abuse on the other side, he takes measures to protect his team. “Part of the competition is that some people will try to take advantage of you,” he said.

 

And La Russa won’t stand for that. “If somebody spanks you, we spank back,” he said. “That’s part of the competition.”

 

 

* He prefers not to take extreme action -– demanding the confiscation of a bat or a pat-down of the pitcher -– unless he is retaliating.

 

“There was a time when there was a rage of corked bats in the American League,” La Russa said. “The only time I checked a bat was when there was B.S. from the other side.”

 

 

* He understood that some Cardinals may not agree with his diplomatic approach to the Rogers Affair, but he believes it is his responsibility to handle the matter as he sees fit.

 

“It is possible there are guys that disagree,” La Russa said. “That’s not the way I want to win.”

 

And for that he deserves praise.

 

 

Well written.

 

I might also put forth the idea that the weather conditions they were facing Rogers under were extremely favorable for the Cards. In that cold/wet weather curve ball pitchers have a very hard time with movement. LaRussa likely knew he was going to have to face Rogers in game 3 if not game 2 and that night was the best place to do battle with him. Pushing Rogers back a game would also make him the Tiger's game 7 pitcher. Not a desireable thing.

[chiefjay]

Whatever you say cheater.

 

 

I'm thinking Larussa remembers that he had McGwire and probably would be called a hypocrite if he accused another player or team of cheating.

[cre8tiff]

I'm thinking Larussa remembers that he had McGwire and probably would be called a hypocrite if he accused another player or team of cheating.

 

 

Ouch.

[Pope Flick]

Classic LaRussa mind games: it's his way of keeping the fact that his 83 win team sucks for a WS team. When they lose, this will be what everyone talks about, that they somehow got cheated (but he's a nice guy and didn't want to bust them on it <--how WEAK is that?) not that they got beat.

Edited October 24, 2006 by Pope Flick

[twiley]

I'm thinking Larussa remembers that he had McGwire and probably would be called a hypocrite if he accused another player or team of cheating.

 

They never proved anything.

 

Show me some pictures of McGwire shooting up.

[The Misfit]

First person that comes to mind with this is Gaylord Perry. He was the king of this

 

 

Me, too. And, fortunately, he's never been shy about speaking his mind. And he makes me

 

From the NY Times today:

 

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 23 — Gaylord Perry, that master of doctoring a baseball who was just as much a master of making batters think he was doctoring it, has no doubt about what Kenny Rogers smeared across the palm of his left hand in the World Series.

 

Gaylord Perry, an admitted spitballer, says he knows what was on Kenny Rogers’s hand.

Perry laughed at Rogers’s explanation that it was dirt.

 

Perry, the man who was defined by the spitball, and by all of the histrionics that accompanied throwing it or not throwing it, watched Rogers pitching for the Detroit Tigers on Sunday. Perry said he immediately detected that the brown smudge on Rogers’s hand was from a well-known sticky substance.

 

“Oh, well, he probably just used a little pine tar,” said Perry, sounding like a convivial, convincing Southern lawyer. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

Then Perry, who lives in North Carolina, said Rogers could have kept his hand from getting discolored and kept his secret had he selected a different brand.

 

“If he got some North Carolina pine tar, that’s clear,” Perry said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got to know what you’re doing.”

 

For 22 entertaining years, Perry applied spit, Vaseline, baby oil, hair tonic and several other wet substances to the surface of the ball to help make it move more. Perry would adjust his cap, tug at his sleeves and rub his face and neck before unleashing a pitch, forcing hitters to think he was loading the ball with a foreign substance every time.

 

Since Perry vigorously stumps for pitchers who are seeking advantages, he was giddy about what he felt Rogers had done in taming the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-1, in Game 2. Perry said that pitchers use pine tar in chilly weather because the ball is slick and the stickiness allows them to have better control. The wind chill in Detroit was 30 degrees at game time.

 

But Perry said he never used pine tar to deface a ball; he preferred rosin, which is legal, to get a better grip. Perry, a Hall of Fame pitcher who won 314 games, does not blame Rogers for saying the substance on his hand was dirt. But neither does Perry believe Rogers.

 

“If it was dirt, something had to make it stick there,” Perry said. “Dirt isn’t just sticking there in cold weather.”

 

Television close-ups indicated that Rogers had something on his hand in the first inning, but he washed it off before the second and pitched seven more scoreless innings. Rogers reiterated on Monday that it was not pine tar. “It was mud, rosin, sweat and spit,” Rogers said. “It’s always there.”

 

As Rogers was surrounded by about 75 reporters, Todd Jones, Detroit’s closer, stood 50 feet away and said that he has used pine tar on balls during his career. Jones, who writes a column for The Sporting News, wrote in 2005 that he used it every time he pitched for the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field. Jones said the substance helped him grip the ball in the 5,000-foot elevation in Denver.

 

“My situation was, when I was in Denver, I had to have it or I wasn’t going to be worth anything,” Jones said. “In 2003, I had an 8 E.R.A. It didn’t help. It’s not an advantage. You’re just trying to break even.”

 

Jones said he stored the pine tar in his glove or on his hand or in other undisclosed places. Pitchers who are caught using pine tar on balls are ejected and suspended for 10 games.

 

“This is not brand new, guys,” Jones said. “It’s an accepted thing. I think there’s a difference between pine tar and Vaseline.”

 

Perry said that Rogers, by using pine tar, was not cheating and was “taking advantage” of a situation. Even though Rogers briefly had something on his hand, Perry said what might be even more relevant is what he planted in the hitters’ heads.

 

“He did his thing,” Perry said. “He got all the Cardinals thinking he was doing something with the ball. That’s half the game right there.”

 

As Perry watched Rogers on television, he felt a kinship with the pitcher who has morphed into an October force by throwing 23 scoreless innings in a row.

 

“I’m proud of him, man,” Perry said. “He did it to them. Good for him. Now you’ll have a thousand high school kids using pine tar, too.”

 

Perry joked that if the Cardinals wanted to know what was on Rogers’s hand, a hitter should have “just walked out and shook his hand to see if it was sticky.” Perry said the best strategy for the hitters would have been to move up as much as possible in the batter’s box and hit Rogers’s pitches before they broke.

 

When Rogers was asked about Perry, he called him a “great pitcher,” but he did not address the slippery method that helped make Perry memorable. Meanwhile, Perry reveled in discussing Rogers. Perry noted that he has white pine trees on his property and offered to send Rogers some of that North Carolina pine tar.

 

“This will probably stay with him,” Perry said. “It’s like the spitball has been for me. It’s stayed with me for the rest of my life.”