By Dave Diamond

I knew it. Don’t feel badly baseball fans, we’re all in this one together. We were bamboozled, and we had to be. Because to be totally convinced that Kenny Rogers is not only a prime-time pitcher but a mature human being takes one hell of an illusion.

It seemed to be raw emotion and past experiences that propelled Rogers to another level. Instead, it was pine tar on his pitching hand, a major no-no according to Major League Baseball rules. And wonderfully enough, he got away with it.

The league said they cannot suspend Rogers because they didn’t catch him red-handed. Well, it was more yellowish-brown, and ESPN and Fox have about five camera angles of the substance smeared along the base of his thumb. And not only footage from Sunday night, but from his two previous playoffs starts-all stellar-and from games during the regular season. The substance is there in every one. Yes, the evidence is flimsy at best.

Let us relive the sequence of events: Fox notices the substance on Rogers’ hand and puts it on screen. Both the Tigers and Cardinals realize the situation because there are monitors in the clubhouse. St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa allows Rogers to finish the first inning, then calls the umpire over to discuss what he saw, meanwhile the Tiger coaches rush Rogers to the clubhouse to wash his hand. The umps check Rogers’ hand an inning later, finding nothing, and Rogers continues to baffle the Cards for seven more innings.

After his last inning, Rogers pulled manager Jim Leyland aside after his last inning to seemingly discuss how to handle this with the media.This was so embarrassing that a mid-day soap opera would reject the plot, and the “sticky” situation raises two interesting questions. How should we respond to Rogers? And what in the world was LaRussa thinking?

If he wasn’t such a fixture in St. Louis, LaRussa should lose his job if the Cards lose this series. What manager in his right mind would not throw the clubhouse buffet table on the field to stop the game long enough to get Rogers kicked out? The pitcher was blatantly cheating LaRussa’s club on the biggest stage, and he did nothing. His reasoning may have been admirable-he wanted to avoid a confrontation on national television and he and Leyland are good friends-but his job is to win. If he wasn’t busy being a good-will ambassador he might have done the right thing for his team and ultimately for baseball, which was to exploit Rogers and get him ejected. Instead, he created another instance where a baseball player does something immoral and gets off scot-free.

As for Rogers, what else can be said besides “we should have seen this coming?” Rogers went on record as saying it was a clump of dirt. No, Kenny, it was pine tar. His playoff career before this season was a clump of dirt. The fact that he pitched seven scoreless innings after he washed his hand is irrelevant. If he would put it so obviously on his hand, then why not his glove, belt, or hat?

Rogers dug his grave on this one. He was never good in the playoffs, not even mediocre. Now explain an illegal substance and three straight shutouts. Many will argue that he washed it off, so it apparently wasn’t affecting his pitching. Then why was it on his hand, and why was he so quick to wash it off and lie about it?

Put it this way, if this were a batter shattering his bat and cork flew out, he would have been ejected on the spot and suspended indefinitely. The pitching equivalent to a corked bat is a doctored ball, and Rogers will likely start Game 6 if there is one, no questions asked.

When he hit the cameraman last season in Texas, he embarrassed himself and his team. Then when we had the heart to accept and cheer for him, he trumped his previous efforts and embarrassed the good game of baseball and the honor of playing in the World Series.

He may get a championship ring, and it will be about the size of the guilty lump in his throat when he thinks about how he cheated the game.