Month: October 2006 (Page 9 of 32)

I don’t know about anybody else, but I for one, am sick and tired of being lied to by Major League Baseball players.

In the constant barrage of steroid stories that have engulfed the MLB over the past decade, why do these athletes continue to think that we as a general public are stupid? Barry Bonds thought it was flax seed oil he was taking and not steroids. Sammy Sosa all of a sudden can’t understand English when he was probed in court over his steroid involvement. And now Kenny Rogers “thought it was dirt” that magically wound up on his left hand (his pitching hand mind you) in Game 2 of the World Series. Come on Kenny, it wasn’t dirt. The Scores Report’s own David Mesker said it best in his recap of the game Sunday night: ‘dude’s got pin tar on his hand.’

Would someone please stand up and be a man after you get caught? Or better yet, don’t cheat! When reporters asked if home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez asked him to rub the “dirt” off of his hand after the first inning, Rogers responded by saying: “no, I noticed it and rubbed it off.” Yet, MLB umpire supervisor Steve Palermo said after the game that Marquez asked Rogers to wash off the “dirt”. So, which was it Kenny?

This is utter crap in a long line of bull from yet another MLB cheating situation. Granted, Rogers still pitched a great game after he wiped the crud of his hand and has now amassed 23 scoreless innings in the postseason. But since when did Kenny Rogers turn into Cy Young all of a sudden? ESPN has aired shots of the mysterious dirt being on Rogers’ hand in each of his previous two-playoff outings too.

Hmm, if that is dirt that keeps showing on only Rogers’ left hand – then that my friends, is one magic piece of dirt.

The camera doesn’t lie. Fox caught a shot of Kenny Rogers’ pitching hand that spoke a thousand words. Analyst Tim McCarver seemed to be giving Rogers the benefit of the doubt at first, calling it “discoloration,” but we were all thinking the same thing: dude’s got pine tar on his hand. The only way this gets better is if George Brett leaps from the stands to get in the face of the umpires.

Not that it would have mattered if Rogers left a jar of Vaseline on the mound next to him: the Gambler was, um, dealing tonight, limiting the Cardinals to two hits over eight innings (he washed his hands after the first inning, so even if he was cheating in the first, the Cards still couldn’t hit him for seven “clean” innings) and running his consecutive scoreless innings streak to 23. Jeff Weaver, to his credit, pitched very well, striking out five and walking one. But he basically lost the game the second that Craig Monroe hit that towering home run in the first inning, Monroe’s fifth of the postseason. One run was all that Rogers needed, though the Tigers added an RBI double by Carlos Guillen and an RBI single by Sean Casey.

Speaking of Rogers, every time they showed a close-up of him on that camera behind home plate, I thought of Henry Rollins. I half expected him to say, “I’m Kenny Rogers, and this is Off-Road Tattoo!” The close-up shots of Weaver, on the other hand, were like watching the Honkey Cam. He made a face that, to paraphrase Bill Hicks, was the human equivalent of showing a dog a card trick. Durrrr.

When Casey was in the batter’s box, I kept thinking, “What’s with the tongue?” He’s got some Michael Jordan thing going. Then Fox cut to a shot of four men wearing baseball-shaped masks over their faces, and I thought, “Hey, Los Straitjackets is here!” A very entertaining game all the way around, even if very little happened on the field until the ninth, when Todd Jones nearly blew the game after recording two quick outs and then giving up a single, booting a routine grounder, coughing up a double and then plunking a guy. Yadier Molina, the ninth inning hero of Game 7 against the Mets, grounded out weakly to shortstop. Game over. Yikes. Maybe send Joel Zumaya out for the next game that’s on the line?

Monroe gave a Yogi-ish quote in the post-game interviews, saying, “Living out this dream is what every kid dreams about.” No kidding?