Pineda wasn’t a cheater, simply a knucklehead, and, as the subtext of this conversation implied, he was ruining a good thing for all the other pitchers in the league.

They even made suggestions: put some on your sleeves get your catcher to put it onto the ball or ask one of your infielders to do it. It’s just that most people do it more covertly. That’s because, as they repeatedly insisted, everybody does it. They did not, however, castigate him for using the stuff in the first place. On Wednesday night, after the game, the roundtable of experts on ESPN’s “Baseball Tonight” mocked Pineda for his inelegant attempt at sneaking pine tar onto the ball. Pitchers are allowed to use rosin, which is another gripping agent that comes from pine trees it’s openly available in a bag kept to one side of the mound. It gets confusing, though-not all foreign substances are banned. A lubed-up spitball, for instance, is as likely to hit a batter as it is to make it over the plate. The rationale behind these rules is that messing with the ball makes it do weird, unfair, and potentially dangerous things in flight. They are also not allowed to spit on the ball, rub it on their bodies, or otherwise deface it.

By the letter of the rules, they cannot “apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball.” That includes tacky substances as well as slippery things like Vaseline. Pitchers, meanwhile, are not allowed to use it. Hitters are allowed to put it on their bats, to keep them from slipping out of their hands and flying dangerously at players on the field, or into the stands. Pine tar, which is the sticky byproduct of a process of firing pine wood under pressure, has been a part of baseball for decades.

New sticky baseball