Detroit – The game began with controversy over a substance on Kenny Rogers’ left thumb. It ended with the St. Louis Cardinals reduced to a smudge on his windshield.
Saving his team’s season and extending one of the most dominating stretches in postseason history, Rogers mauled the Cardinals on Sunday night, delivering eight shutout innings in a 3-1 Detroit Tigers victory that evened the World Series 1-1.
So good was the Tigers’ starter, talk afterward should have been about comparisons to Whitey Ford or even Don Larsen. Instead, all anybody wanted was the dirt on Rogers. How did that brownish mark get on his hand? Who knew about it, and when? Does it stain a remarkable run in which Rogers has rooted himself in postseason lore, stringing together 23 consecutive scoreless innings?
“It was a big clump of dirt, and I wiped it off,” Rogers said. “I didn’t know it was there, and they told me and I took it off. It wasn’t a big deal.”
Conflicting responses and explanations, however, only muddied the waters. The controversy sprouted when Fox TV cameras picked up the mark in the first inning on Rogers’ hand. Cardinals reserve players watching from the warm clubhouse – the wind chill dipped below freezing – notified manager Tony La Russa of the potential infraction.
La Russa approached the umpiring crew with his concerns after the top of the first inning, but nothing was done.
At least not initially. It wasn’t until Rogers ran off the field in the second inning that plate umpire Alfonso Marquez confronted him. That led to a brief exchange with Rogers and Tigers manager Jim Leyland.
“It’s not important, so I don’t want to discuss it,” La Russa said. “When a guy pitches like that, we don’t want to take anything away from him.”
Rogers, who allowed two hits and struck out five, insisted that the umpires never talked with him about the smudge, that Marquez only addressed pace-of-game issues.
OK, fine. Except for the fact that Steve Palermo, supervisor of the umpires, insisted that Marquez told Rogers about his hands-on issues. After all, the rules state if the ball is (intentionally) discolored by soil it’s an automatic ejection (and grounds for a suspension).
“To the best of my knowledge, he said, ‘Kenny, also that dirt thing that you’ve got on your hand, if you’ll do me a favor and just take it off,”‘ Palermo said.
Which led to one of the strangest World Series questions ever. Steve, how do you know it was dirt?
“Because it was observed as dirt,” Palermo said testily. “These umpires, they’ve been around for more than a week or so, you know.”
The query was motivated by suspicions that it might have been pine tar, which some pitchers have been known to use to create a better grip and more movement on their pitches. Problem is, after Rogers washed his hand he continued cleaning up, holding the Cardinals hitless for six straight innings until Yadier Molina’s sharp single to right field.
“Well, that pretty much ruins it for all those conspiracy theorists out there,” said Tigers closer Todd Jones, who escaped a bases-loaded ninth-inning jam. “Kenny’s just on a different level right now.”
Craig Monroe provided Rogers with an adrenaline injection in the first, hitting his fifth homer in the playoffs, tying Hank Greenberg’s franchise record. The Tigers carried a three-run lead into the ninth behind Rogers’ perfection.
Fall is a time for endings in baseball. But Rogers has experienced a rebirth at a time when most players are kicking dirt. Maybe that’s why the mudslinging struck the Tigers as more amusing than annoying.
“If he had something wrong, something would have been done about it,” outfielder Curtis Granderson said. “Kenny was outstanding, and we won a game we needed to have.”
Staff writer Troy E. Renck can be reached at 303-954-1301 or trenck@denverpost.com.
