Doctored balls

What was everyone thinking? I'm trying to make sense of this whole Kenny Rogers/Tony LaRussa doctored ball situation, and I think that I don't have quite enough information. I wasn't watching in the first inning of Game 2, and so I'm getting all of this through the skewed filter of news commentary. There are a couple of pertinent questions:

1) Was Kenny Rogers deliberately doctoring the balls with some foreign (illegal) substance, which is to say something other than dirt, rosin, and spit? The answer to this, to my mind, is probably not. For some reason, Kenny Rogers has not only completely reversed his past playoff failures (8.80 ERA in his pre-2006 postseason), but has, at the venerable age of 41, discovered his inner Christy Matthewson and has been dazzling batters from Oakland to the Bronx. Does a little pine tar or vaseline do that for you? No. Might Kenny be looking for an artificial edge at this point in his career? Of course, I wouldn't doubt that. He does have a faster fastball this year than he's had in recent memory- I'm not making assumptions, but a scuffed ball doesn't travel 3-4 mph faster. If Kenny's cheating, it isn't on the ball.

2) Did Tony LaRussa suspect cheating? I think he probably did. He brought the issue to the attention of the officials, didn't he? He just wanted Kenny's hand cleaned off. That's the confusing thing. And it leads to the next question...

3) Why did Tony not make an official challenge, and possibly get unhittable Kenny Rogers tossed from the game and maybe from the World Series? There are two legitimate reasons for this. First, he did it "for the good of the game." He didn't think Kenny's cheating was significant or substantial, and he didn't want the Series marred by something that big. This would have been twenty times bigger than Roger Clemens throwing the barrel of the bat at Mike Piazza. This would have been one of the biggest World Series scandals since 1919. Good ol' Tony's just letting the boys play, protecting the integrity of the pure game. I don't buy that.

The second explanation is that Tony's not about to cast asparagus at the other team when he knows damn well that these same sorts of gamesmanship issues could easily (and perhaps more effectively) hurt his own team. He knows that he might get Rogers thrown out of a game, but he doesn't want to risk getting Chris Carpenter and Jeff Suppan tossed as well- especially against a canny guy like Jim Leyland, who has been around the game long enough to know where a couple of bodies are buried.

Ultimately, the way this is going to play out depends on who wins the World Series. Either LaRussa will be celebrated as a master tactician who just wants the game to be played the right way, or he'll be reviled (even in friendly St.Louis) as the guy who refused to give his team its best chance (and perhaps only chance) to steal Game 2 from the Tigers at Detroit.

You all (well, both of you) know my prediction. Tigers in five. LaRussa will be the goat. Will he be fired? Hell no. He took an incredibly mediocre team to the World Series. He's a mad genius, isn't he? If there's one thing he should be thankful for at this point, it is that he doesn't manage a team in the northeast.