MLB losing its grip over illegal substances
Manfred’s attempt at solving illegal substance issue off to rocky start
PHILADELPHIA >> Not that you would think the common Commissioner of Baseball would have a clue, since so many in the past haven’t, but is this what Rob Manfred wants?
Managers yelling into dugouts, pitchers yelling at managers and umpires, umpires feeling up pitchers’ belts and caps for “illegal substances,” and in the case of Oakland A’s reliever Sergio Romo, half-dropping his drawers below butt level on the field.
It was a classless act Tuesday night by Romo, but it fit in perfectly with where baseball has gone in this summer of the Post-Pandemic Exhale.
Manfred is already dealing with the financial fallout from coronavirus’ impact and a slow return to stadiums by fans, partly due to the fact of games growing longer and duller with each passing day and stupid rules changes. Now comes another sticky problem.
Not entirely his fault, of course, but Manfred’s first stab at solving it has the potential to make baseball even more of a laughingstock on the sports
landscape than it already is. That’s because Manfred, hearing from his people that too many pitchers’ dips into manufactured concoctions had increased the spin rate of the baseball to epic proportion, went ahead and approved an immediate change that allows umps to conduct random checks of the pitchers for illegal substances applied to the ball. Worse, the rule essentially empowers managers to have pitchers checked at a moment’s whim.
So starting Monday you saw umps going out to pitchers and checking out their caps, belts and gloves for signs of anything from hair gels to the celebrated “Spider Tack,” the popular pitchers’ glue of choice.
Spider Tack, Spider Tack ... helps pitchers do whatever a spider can?
Not anymore, since Manfred has elevated his umpires to part-time cops.
Max Scherzer, long one of baseball’s premier starting pitchers, wasn’t happy with the Fuzz in Blue early on in his start at Citizens Bank Park Tuesday. Twice he was subjected to random checks. But what really set him off was when Phils manager Joe Girardi, taking advantage of the dumb directive to allow managers to request substance checks, requested a third Scherzer check during the fourth inning.
Now Scherzer, who had just almost hit Alec Bohm with a 95 mph fastball because, “it slipped out of my hand,” was incensed. At one point, he unbuckled his belt to offer it up for a check, but later said he was warned by umpire Alfonso Marquez to stop the striptease right then and there.
“I have nothing on me,” Scherzer said. “Check whatever you want. I’ll take off all my clothes if you want to see me.”
Yeah, the umps would love that.
Scherzer, who swore he was only using the (still legal) rosin bag and a little head sweat to try to get a grip, indeed stopped undressing. But his anger at Girardi started to boil, and after Marquez told everyone that Scherzer had “nothing but sweat” in his hair, Nationals manager Dave Martinez pointed from the mound into the Phillies’ dugout.
The next inning, as he was leaving the field, Scherzer stared at Girardi, who had been subjected to more yells from the Nationals dugout. That prompted Girardi to stomp up the dugout steps and onto the field to challenge Scherzer and Co., earning Girardi an ejection.
“I’ve seen Max a long time, since 2010,” Girardi said. “Obviously, he’s going to be a Hall of Famer. But I’ve never seen him wipe his head like he was doing tonight. Ever. So it was suspicious for me. He did it about four or five times. It was suspicious. I didn’t mean to offend anyone. I’ve just got to do what’s right for our club.”
What’s going on isn’t right for baseball. What happened between Scherzer and Girardi isn’t right, even if Scherzer intentionally pulled off a comical request before Wednesday’s game by asking an ump to check Bryce Harper’s stylishly gelled hair.
What happened in Texas late Tuesday after Oakland’s Romo threw his glove down, then his cap, then his belt and then dropped his pants to thigh level in front of that ump was ugly too, but at least his shirt covered all the bad parts.
In an apparent attempt Wednesday morning to heighten all this discord, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo went on a Washington-area sports talk radio show and promptly proclaimed Girardi to be a “con artist.”
According to a story in the Washington Times, Rizzo appeared on 106.7FM “The Fan,” on a show that of course is called, “The Sports Junkies,” and said, “You’re not supposed to ask umpires to check unless you have probable cause to do so. You know, if you see a ball with some pine tar on it or something like that, that’s probable cause to check the pitcher.”
That didn’t sit well with Phils president Dave Dombrowski, who noted to media members before Wednesday’s game that it was “totally improper for (Rizzo) to say that.”
Girardi later shrugged off Rizzo’s rant. He knows it all is just another form of “gamesmanship,” since, you know, it takes one to know one.
“There were some coaches screaming at me, coaches I know, and it bothered me,” Girardi said. “I’m not playing games here. I have respect for people over there, I have respect for what Max has done in his career. But again, I’ve got to do what’s right for my team.”
What would be right for baseball? Start with Rob Manfred sitting down with a panel of owners and executives and umpires and try to figure out how not to further muddle up a sticky situation. Figure out a better way to get pitchers to stop cheating so much ... even though this “cheating” has essentially been a part of the game since the start of the modern era.
Then stay seated and figure out a way to make baseball games SHORTER. Find a happy medium between a four-hour marathon – which was about the running time of the Nationals’ 3-2 win Tuesday night – and the slightly quicker games featuring a general lack of hits that has caused the overall major league batting average to hover in the mid-.230s all season.
There was a time not long ago when if you only hit in the .230s you weren’t going to be in the major leagues for very long. Ah, but that was baseball then and this is baseball now. What a sad difference. In the words of Radio Rizzo, who alleged Girardi had been lying about his reason for having Scherzer checked again, “What are we, idiots?”
I would presume no one in the Commissioner’s office wants to answer that.