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The Biggest Cheaters in Baseball History
Kevin Hench / FOXSports.com
When a guy enters the postseason with an 8.85 career playoff ERA and then breaks off 23 straight scoreless innings, it's almost like a hitter who has never hit 50 homers suddenly slugging 73 in one season. In a word, strange.
Was Kenny "Mud, Resin and Spit" Rogers cheating Sunday night in Detroit? Has he been cheating all postseason long? And if so, where would his foreign-substance-on-his-pitching-hand malfeasance rank in baseball's long history of no-good cheats?
Let's take a look at the Top 10 ...
10. Daffy Raffy
While everyone around him was being super evasive, former Orioles' first baseman Rafael Palmeiro wagged his finger at Congress and declared, "I've never used steroids. Period." As Conan O'Brien so astutely pointed out, Palmeiro should have said, "I've never used steroids. Question mark." When Raffy got nailed for stanozolol last year, he was still wagging fingers, this time implicating teammate Miguel Tejada. Looks like his farewell tour ended with a so long to Cooperstown.
9. Howell history view me?
In the most analogous incident to the Kenny Rogers drama, Jay Howell was pitching for the Dodgers in Game 3 of the 1988 National League Championship Series when he was caught with pine tar on his glove. Howell was ejected and — after an appeal — ended up being suspended for the next two games of the NLCS. Like the bitter weather in Detroit on Sunday night that kept the ball from having its usual tack, Game 3 of the '88 NLCS was played in a cold rain. Apparently Howell made the mistake of having pine tar on his glove when he should have just applied it directly to his pitching hand.
8. Pine tar fuels non-roid rage
The first baseball superstar to make headlines for 'roids needed Preparation H, not HGH, to be at his best in the 1980 World Series. Three years later, it was some inadvertent cheating that sent George Brett into a non-roid rage. It's not clear why a batter would want the ball to stick to his bat, but for some reason there's a rule limiting how far up the barrel a batter can put pine tar on his lumber. And Brett was in violation of this obscure rule, something Billy Martin knew and was keeping in his pocket until the perfect moment. After Brett hit a Goose Gossage pitch into the stratosphere, Martin tattled to home plate ump Tim McClelland, who called Brett out, triggering one of the all-time great, bug-eyed meltdowns. American League president Lee MacPhail overturned McClelland's ruling, allowed the home run to stand, and the Royals prevailed when the game was resumed.
7. Hey, Joe, where you goin' with that nail file in your hand?
When the law is closing in on a perp, his first thought is escape and his second is disposing of the evidence. With nowhere to run and the umps closing in all around him, knuckleballer-turned-scuffer Joe Niekro tried his best to get rid of the evidence. Turns out it is very hard to discreetly throw an emery board far enough to convince the fuzz that it doesn't belong to you. Niekro's lame attempt was spied by umpire Tim Tschida and his crime earned him a 10-game suspension. The second base ump that night in 1987 was Steve Palermo, the current supervisor of umpires, whose crew opted for leniency with Rogers.
6. Sosa comes uncorked
Whoops. It was an honest mistake. In a 2003 game, then-Cubs slugger Slammin' Sammy Sosa "accidentally" grabbed his batting practice bat. You know, the corked one that he used to put on awesome power displays for the fans before safely tucking it away and taking out a legal stick. When the bat snapped, pieces of cork could easily be seen in the shattered barrel. Apparently that's the only way a cork will ever be popped on the North Side of Chicago. In an odd twist, umpire Tim McClelland, who had had the misfortune of sending George Brett into his famous fury 20 years earlier, was the guy to break the bad news to Sammy after examining his handiwork.
5. Albert Belle and Jason Grimsley
Even before he was naming or not naming names in HGH-gate, Jason Grimsley had established himself as an innovative cheater. If not for Grimsley's Mission Impossible trip through the air duct, Albert Belle's bat-corking would have been just another entry on the miscreant's long ledger of misdeeds. But after the suspicious umps confiscated one of Belle's bats in 1994, Grimsley went into Agent Ethan Hunt mode and crawled through a duct, dropped down into the umps' locker room and replaced the bat with an uncorked one. "My heart was going a thousand miles a second," Grimsley would later say. His brain, sadly, was going considerably slower. The bat he replaced Belle's with had Paul Sorrento's autograph on it and the switcheroo couldn't save Belle from a seven-game suspension.
4. Steal sign, win suit (and pennant)
There has been much debate, denial and confession about the extent to which the New York Giants were stealing signs during their incredible 37-8 sprint to the finish line in 1951. The controversy has led some — including Ralph Branca — to believe that Bobby Thomson knew what pitch was coming when he hit the Shot Heard Round the World. Well, if the Giants were stealing signs in that final playoff game, the system must not have been all that much help since they scored a grand total of one run off of Don Newcombe through the first eight innings.
3. Perry's foreign substance abuse
Gaylord Perry took throwing junk to a whole new level.
When you don't have a ton of velocity, the last thing you want to do is throw a ball that goes straight. Gaylord Perry, who was famous for his Vaseline ball, admitted to using various foreign substances to make sure his ball didn't go straight. Kenny Rogers claims that the strange substance on his pitching hand was a combination of mud, resin and spit. Sounds like the beginnings of Perry's tool kit. Perry was suspended for 10 games for throwing a spitter in 1982. Gene Tenace, who caught Perry in San Diego, said there were times the ball was so loaded up he had trouble throwing it back to the mound.
2. Say it ain't so, Eddie
Usually baseball cheaters are trying to figure out ways to bend the rules to win. Not the 1919 Chicago White Sox. Eight members of the Black Sox decided to bet on the Reds, tank the World Series and simultaneously cash in and stick it to their penurious owner Charles Comiskey. Unfortunately for Reds leadoff hitter Maurice Rath, the sign that the fix was in was for ChiSox pitcher Eddie Cicotte to drill him, which he did — right between the shoulder blades — with the second pitch of Game 1. Really? Couldn't tip your cap or mop your brow? Had to drill the unsuspecting sap in the batter's box, huh? Sounds like more than one crime was committed here.
1. The Cream Rises (but Barry Thought it Was Flaxseed Oil)
It's probably happened to you. You ingest a little flaxseed oil and rub an arthritis cream on your arms and the next thing you know you've added 50 pounds of muscle and your hat size has doubled. According to Bonds, he unknowingly used steroids known as "the clear" and "the cream" when he submitted blindly to whatever it was his trainer wanted him to do. Well, the vast majority of baseball fans knowingly assume Barry's a cheater. The fans are right, of course. The remaining question as to whether or not Barry knew he was cheating was the hapless victim of his trainer's scheme is fairly immaterial in terms of the sanctity of 755. When Bonds passes Hank Aaron, baseball should "clear" Barry's records from the books.
