At Major League Baseball’s instant replay command center in Manhattan on Thursday night, a most experienced and intrigued observer watched the Michael Pineda silliness play out in real time. And he thought back to “the toughest of all times for me” in a Hall of Fame career.
If you can’t understand why Pineda’s usage of pine tar — apparently not only in his win over the Red Sox Thursday night, but also in his first 2014 start, last Saturday in Toronto — elicited massive yawns among the folks who actually participate in the games, then you need only to speak with Tony La Russa, who let a similar situation pass eight seasons ago in a World Series game, of all times.
“I relied on what I was taught by Sparky [Anderson],” La Russa, now a consultant for MLB, told The Post on Friday in a telephone interview. “I spoke to Sparky a few days later, and I told him what I was thinking. He said, ‘I’m proud of you.’ ”
The evolution of media — in this case, high-definition cameras and Twitter — have provided the public with more access and a greater forum than ever. Yet, that doesn’t at all equate to more knowledge or understanding. When it comes to pitchers using pine tar, sunscreen or other such substances, the unwritten rules supersede those in print.
“It’s one of the sensible compromises that some people make,” La Russa said. “[Pine tar] gives a pitcher good control of his pitches.” And hitters would prefer that, particularly on a cold night, to the alternative of a ball getting loose and nailing someone in the head.
La Russa’s Cardinals were playing the Tigers, managed by his great friend, Jim Leyland, in Game 2 of the 2006 World Series. Tigers left-hander Kenny Rogers, having dominated the Yankees and A’s in the American League Division Series and AL Championship Series, respectively, pitched a shutout top of the first inning. TV cameras spotted the pine tar on his hand.
There could have been a request for a full inspection of Rogers, with the potential consequences of an ejection for violating the rule forbidding this — and Leyland and the Tigers pumped for vengeance should a Cardinals pitcher have something funny on his hand. Instead, La Russa informally raised the issue to the umpires, and Rogers washed his hand and stayed in the game — and dominated the Cardinals for seven more innings, giving the Tigers their only victory in that Fall Classic.
“I don’t remember anything until late in the game and then after talking about it,” Aaron Miles, the Cardinals’ starting second baseman in that game, said Friday in a telephone interview.
As Miles said: “It’s one of those forms of cheating that everyone turns their back to. If [a pitcher] was standing two feet in front of the mound, I’d yell, ‘Get back there!’ But using something to grab the ball better? Just throw that ball over the plate.”
Pineda’s biggest crime was not duplicity, but stupidity — and that likely was the gist of the conversation between MLB executive vice president of baseball operations Joe Torre and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. Similar to “Fight Club,” the first rule of using pine tar is to not to advertise you’re using pine tar.
“If a pitcher is going to use some additive to gain a grip, you’d like to think he’d be a little bit more discreet,” said Red Sox manager John Farrell, a former pitcher himself.
So we’re talking about a misdemeanor among misdemeanors. Here in this heated Rivalry, with both teams jousting for the early edge, Farrell adamantly defended the honor of the pitcher who beat them in the series opener. Cashman, in his sardonic style, made light of the issue and those obsessing over it.
“Maybe we’ll put up those signs, ‘Employees must wash their hands’ — like you see in restaurants,” Cashman said. “If that’ll make everybody feel better, then we’ll play around with that. Otherwise, it’s not an issue.”
You know what will make everybody feel better? If people stopped opining out of their rear ends. If MLB wants to change the written rule to allow pine tar — be it just in the cold or in all conditions — then fine. But unwritten rules always will exist, and sometimes it’s up to the rest of us to separate real drama from the fake stuff. There’s really no debate into which category we should put this one.