Thought I'd Seen It All

[broncosmitty]

a one ape army to conquer them all.....

I could use a Molina or three as well.

(Went to HS with a pack of Molina brothers. None of played baseball. But they're crazy glue sniffers too.)

 

[packerzrule]

that was pretty funny

 

[JohnU]

If you look at the photo of Molina's protector, it's clear there is pine tar on it. That's troubling if catchers are allowed to this, for obvious reasons. I can see how it would be hard to keep it off of anything, but hitters have it on their helmets as well.

The odds of a ball sticking to pine tar for that duration of time reaches the subliminal.

Still, i'd say MLB needs to address pine tar on the equipment. Is this ever going to happen again? Nah ... but pine tar on a catcher's equipment is no different from the Gaylord Perry myth, which has suddenly exposed a couple of clues, has it not?

It's like the guy who was accused of smuggling diamonds in a Mercedes at the French port of Marseilles. The police looked and looked, never found a diamond.

The guy was smuggling Mercedes autos.

 

[moxie]

I don't know if it was pine tar exactly, but I do know that a leather ball would not stick to a plastic chest protector like that unless a third material was involved. It is possible this substance was on the chest guard, but why would a catcher want sticky crap on his pads?

He probably puts it on his equipment for a couple reasons...one- just a little smudge on the ball to help his pitcher when nobody is looking and to help stop a runaway wild pitch, like it did in this instance. I've never touched pine tar, but I keep hearing people say, "Oh, it's not THAT sticky!" but if you have a bit on both surfaces (ball and chest plate), it's going to be doubly sticky.

 

[JohnU]

He probably puts it on his equipment for a couple reasons...one- just a little smudge on the ball to help his pitcher when nobody is looking and to help stop a runaway wild pitch, like it did in this instance. I've never touched pine tar, but I keep hearing people say, "Oh, it's not THAT sticky!" but if you have a bit on both surfaces (ball and chest plate), it's going to be doubly sticky.

It calls into question the entire "Kenny Rogers rule" where umps are throwing balls out of play when they hit the dirt. So a pitch that does not hit the dirt goes right back to the pitcher, who now has a bit of pine tar to work with. Or am I overevaluating the principle? If this is true, which plate umpire has never paid any attention to that? Does MLB go into the lab in "New York" now to review the play? After all, it takes them 4 minutes now to decide if a guy's toe came off the bag on a slide at 3rd base.