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?
