So who's a bigger cheater, Kenny Rogers or Shawne Merriman?
That seemed to be the only question residing in newsrooms around the country yesterday. There were no ifs, ands or buts about it. These two men were viewed as "dirty." They got caught breaking the rules. They, as the majority opinion holds, are now cheaters.
While Merriman actually tested positive for steroids, Kenny Rogers has been found guilty in the court of public opinion mainly because Major League Baseball has not reprimanded the Detroit Tigers starting pitcher for having a shady brown substance on the bottom of his pitching hand in Game 2 of the World Series on Sunday night.
Rogers became the oldest starting pitcher ever to win a World Series game in the Tigers' 3-1 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, evening the series at one game apiece. However, that win is now tarnished in the minds of those who saw the 41-year-old pitcher clean the brownish gunk off his throwing hand after the first inning.
Home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez noticed the "dirt" and told Rogers to clean it off. The umpires brought Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa out to the field for a brief discussion at the end of the first inning, and that was it. There was no more argument. No more speculation on the part of the National League Champions. It was back to business as usual.
Rogers cleaned what he called "a big clump of dirt" off his hand by the time he took the hill in the second inning. And whatever the substance was, taking it off did not prevent him from pitching a gem the rest of the way.
Rogers allowed one hit and one walk in the top of the first inning. He then washed the "dirt" off his hand. After that, the Tigers fiery starter threw seven more shutout innings, allowing only one more hit and two more walks, and compiling four more strikeouts.
He did better with a clean hand.
Maybe that's why LaRussa and the Cardinals had nothing else to say about the situation for the remainder of the game. They kept their mouths shut because not only were they unable to produce against the veteran lefty throughout the entire game, they did better against him when Rogers had the substance on his hand in the first inning.
His postseason history, combined with this incident, gives many baseball gurus a reason to believe he has been cheating in 2006.
Rogers had allowed 20 earned runs in 20 1/3 career postseason innings before this October. He has now thrown 23 consecutive scoreless innings in this year's playoffs, and is only the second pitcher in the history of the game to record three scoreless starts in a single postseason. The other is Christy Mathewson, who threw three complete-game shutouts for the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1905 World Series.
Whether or not the substance on Rogers' hand was anything but dirt remains to be seen, and if it's found to be an illegal substance, it will most likely be covered up by Major League Baseball in an effort to prevent any further damage to a league that is already under the cloud of suspicion called steroids.
But the question at hand is: what did Rogers do wrong?
I'm not defending the guy for having a foreign substance on his hand. But since there wasn't a big stink put up about it, why should I speculate that is the case?
I'll admit, if I'm a batter for the Cardinals and I notice something fishy going on 60 feet away from me, I'd be the first to complain and throw that pitcher under the bus. But seeing the Cardinals declining to push the issue leads me to believe that something even more suspicious is going on.
Maybe cheating in baseball is such an accepted action that everyone is just covering up the game.
We've recently learned that nobody is safe when it comes to protecting steroid users in baseball. Just ask Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro. After a while, we started questioning the legitimacy of every offensive record there had been, and with good reason. Many people have accepted the fact that steroids are prevalent in all professional sports, and most notably in America's pastime.
And if batters have been cheating all these years, what makes pitchers so innocent? You mean to tell me that pitchers knew of prevalent steroid use, and thought, "I'll just work on my fastball in the offseason."
Let's be serious.
Kenny Rogers has been around this league way too long to think that nobody cheats in baseball. That's because everybody cheats in baseball. Only to them, it's not cheating. It just means you're trying harder. It means you will do anything to win. And who wouldn't want a teammate like that.
It's not cheating. It's a competitive edge.
It's not right, but it's Major League Baseball, and Kenny Rogers is just another player who is trying to win.
Danny Picard is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at dpicard@student.umass.edu
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