BOSTON — Jon Lester said it was only rosin, but he could not explain why the white stuff had turned green. Maybe he took a ride with the Ghostbusters before crushing the Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series, and got slimed. Hey, Lester himself noted that video clips showed what looked “like a giant booger” on his glove, so maybe that’s what happened.
Ahem. Whatever Lester did or didn’t do, this type of cheating is common, according to current and former MLB pitchers. And if you drill down to the core of the issue, that is wrong for the same reason steroid use is wrong.
A baseball game is a false construct, an invented thing for which people created arbitrary rules: Nine innings, three outs, no PEDs or doctoring the ball. The only way a game works is if all the participants agree to follow the same rules, and violations are enforced.
Can you make a solid argument that human growth hormone should be legally administered by trainers? That pitchers should be able to rub pine tar on their fingers for a better grip? Of course. But competitive integrity relies on people following whatever silly rules are in place.
Rosin is permitted, but MLB rule 8.02(3) leaves no room for ambiguity on other assorted goo: “The pitcher shall not apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball.”
Cards minor leaguer Tyler Melling was the first to raise this issue, tweeting a photo of Lester’s glove, taken from a television screen, and writing: “Jon Lester using a little Vaseline inside the glove tonight?” Soon, videos popped up on the Internet that showed Lester reaching for the green blob in his glove — rosin, as he and manager John Farrell insisted.
“I didn’t do anything,” Lester said. “They put rosin bags there for a reason. I just put it in my glove. That seems to be the best system for me…It’s all I’ve ever used, and all I will use.”
Although few believe that Lester used vaseline — on a cold night, a pitcher wants a better grip on the ball, and vaseline would not help — I spoke to several baseball people on Thursday who were intrigued by the accusation of a foreign substance of some kind, and felt that the photos and videos justified suspicion.
“There is an interesting story here, because he is such a cutter-heavy pitcher,” said one former MLB pitcher.
But Major League Baseball and the Cardinals declined to pursue the issue. On Thursday morning, an MLB spokesperson said, “We cannot draw any conclusions from this video. There were no complaints from the Cardinals, and the umpires never detected anything indicating a foreign substance throughout the game.”
“If that’s what he claims, then that’s what it is,” said Cards manager Mike Matheny of the rosin story. “That’s all there is to it. And right now it’s pretty much a dead issue. We move on with the fact that the league now has to take notice.”
If Matheny sounded less than totally convinced, we understand. Credit Farrell and Lester for their willingness to calmly discuss the controversy in the middle of a World Series, but neither could explain the fact that the substance appeared green, which was what made it suspicious in the first place.
“I saw the picture and I don’t know why that is,” Lester said. “It looks like a giant booger almost. I don’t know how that came about. The lighting, I don’t know how that is.”
Now Farrell: “If you know Jon Lester, he sweats like a pig and he needs resin. And you know what, he keeps it in his glove.”
A moment later, the manager added, “The one thing that seemed very odd is that it shows up in a lime green color. I don’t know how that can happen.”
Right. Neither do we. We do know that in May, Blue Jays broadcasters Jack Morris and Dirk Hayhurst, both former pitchers, accused Boston’s Clay Buchholz of using a foreign substance on the ball during a game in Toronto; Buchholz denied the allegations.
We also know, from a round of calls and texts on Thursday, that pitchers cheat regularly. This part of the story is not about Lester; if he is not breaking the rules, others are.
One source said that many pitchers use a substance called Cramer Firm Grip as “a common alternative to pine tar.” According to the website for the company Cramer Sports Medicine, the product has a “non-sticky formula (that) improves grip when sweaty.”
Another source, this one a current MLB pitcher, said that pine tar is common, and spray-on sunscreen is also used. “(Vaseline is) not real common,” the pitcher said. “Pine tar maybe.”
The same source added that sunscreen is sometimes used “between innings on their hands. Not on the glove so much for purposes of application.”
Given all that, you don’t need to be a grassy knoll-type to take seriously any accusation of foreign substance use by pitchers. But on Thursday, MLB, the Cardinals and the Red Sox — who, again, responded to every inquiry and answered all questions — worked to minimize the controversy. That was how they were going to play it, and that’s cool, even if the Sox failed to settle on an explanation for the green glow.
One of our anonymous pitchers said, “For me, if I just lost World Series Game 1, and knew the guy was cheating, I would be angry about it.”
If there was anger anywhere at Fenway on Thursday, it was snuffed out by the “nothing to see here” message. At the World Series, the messiest conversations remained in-house.
