Dallas Braden of Baseball Tonight Showed All the Ways He Used Foreign Substances on Balls
By Mike Cardillo
Dallas Braden, the former Oakland Athletics pitcher famous for throwing a perfect game on Mother’s Day in 2010 and feuding with Alex Rodriguez, retired recently and now works on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. With both Milwaukee’s Will Smith and Baltimore’s Brian Matusz suspended in the last seven days for using foreign substances to enhance their grips pitching, Braden narrated a clip of all the clandestine ways he found ways he got away with it. While it wasn’t quite Eddie Harris running down his assortment of illegal aids to Ricky Vaughn in Major League, it came close.
Once again, this whole issue remains confusing looking at it from afar. Hitters say they’d prefer it if pitchers had a better grip on the ball to avoid getting hit. Managers tend to look the other way so long as it’s not “blatant,” such as Smith last week or Michael Pineda last year. If it falls under the auspices of “everyone’s doing it” then why not change the rule? Ultimately the line between what one person thinks is “cheating” or “gamesmanship” is subjective.
Perhaps MLB can hire uniform police to check everyone before they take the mound.
[Video via CJZero]