Rogers' Sticky Palm

You judge for yourself. Did he cheat?

Did Kenny Rogers cheat with his "dirt"-covered pitching hand??

From the pictures above & live broadcast, the dirt looked most like a sticky, oily substance that was glued to the bottom of Rogers' left-palm, his pitching hand. His own explanation of the dirt-look-like thing-ie was the product of rosin, dirt, and sweat. That brownie on his palm looked more like pine-tar and rosin than simply just plain dirt. Given that the weather was cold (~30F) during the game and some pitchers are known to put some pine-tar on their hand (particularly just the fingers) to get a better grip of the baseball, they wouldn't have such fair-size, obvious dark color on their pitching hand. The area where Rogers had the dirt is an interesting spot, because it's not on his fingers but the bottom palm area below his thumb. It's easy to imagine that a ball with some rosin, pine-tar, and some dirt could make some unusual, silly moves as a slider or a curve. If Rogers did play around with some funny substance with the ball, any physicist would be proud of his pitches and the hitters' incapability to make contact with them.

By the way, MLB balls are "rubbed in" with dirt from Mississippi, but are no where near dirt-color-like. Balls are no longer pearls after they have been rubbed in with dirt and water, however, are relatively white after all. In any MLB game, balls are changed when they hit the dirt when they bounced to the catcher or after being fouled off. Rogers' sticky hand presents a questionable situation in which that he should be suspected of doctoring the ball with whatever he's got on his hand. Obviously, having any "foreign substance" (that is excluding just dirt, of course) on the pitcher is an offense to the rules of the game. The question simply comes down to WHAT is on Rogers' hand. It's not just dirt, seemingly.

Some of the most-read sports writers offered their views & Rogers and MLB's response to the dirty question:

Yahoo! Sports:
Dan Wetzel, Caught looking
Jeff Passan, A sticky question

ESPN.com:
Jayson Stark, Rogers' dirty hand overshadows his Game 2 brilliance
Gene Wojciechowski, Rogers was masterful, but did he cheat?
Buster Olney, Top 10 Rogers explanations

Yahoo! Video
Rogers: 'Just dirt'
Ump's view

Clearly, he didn't have dirt when he pitched in prior playoff games this year:

Rogers in ALCS:
















In ALDS: