Tampa Bay relief pitcher Joel Peralta was tossed from a game this week because he had pine tar on his glove.
It was a story that allowed us to review the great old baseball images of George Brett exploding onto the field after the umpires said his ninth-inning homer in Yankee Stadium in 1985 was denied because he had too much pine tar on his bat. It also called to mind the time that Joe Niekro flipped his emery board across the infield and when a Cleveland Indians employee was caught trying to sneak a loaded bat that belonged to Albert Belle out of the umpires’ dressing room.
Ah, the hijinks of those crazy baseball players.
But after the recent verdict involving Roger Clemens, it raised an interesting question about baseball’s rules: Why are certain forms of cheating (scuffing the ball, corked bats, etc.) good-natured fun while steroids (which were not even against baseball’s official rules until the mid-2000s) are akin to flag-burning and ordering the McRib sandwich at McDonald’s?
(Side question: Why do the good folks who make the McRib shape the “meat” into something that looks like it has bones? Is that really a good goal for a sandwich — to give the appearance of bones? And yes, we know the Mickey D folks have served billions and billions, but it’s still worth asking.)