It Ain't Cheatin' If You Do It Against the Yankees

Last night, as so often happens, the Yankees lost a game to a pitcher they'd never faced before. This time, there may have been a reason other than this unfortunate tendency.

Jonathan Loaisiga started for the Pinstripes last night, in the rotation slot that should be filled by the injured James Paxton. He did not pitch well, allowing 4 runs in 4 innings. Luis Cessa pitched the next 3, allowing just 1 more run. But Jake Barrett imploded, allowing 5 runs in 2 innings to put the game out of reach.

Presuming, that is, that the game wasn't already out of reach. The Yankees had a lot of trouble against Mariner starter Yusei Kikuchi. (Japanese, and probably no relation to Charo.) He pitched into the 8th inning, and allowed just 1 run on 3 hits and 1 walk. The only Yankee run came in the 6th, a sacrifice fly by Luke Voit bringing Mike Tauchman home.

Mariners 10, Yankees 1. WP: Kikuchi (2-1). No save. LP: Loaisiga (1-1).

But Aaron Boone wasn't acting as though the Mariners' win was on the up-and-up. He pointed out a smudge under the brim of Kikuchi's cap, and suggested it was pine tar, helping him grip the ball better.

"I heard they were talking about it," he said, "so I was made aware of it sometime, like, in the 8th inning there. So I'll take a look at it, and we'll kind of see what we can make of it."

Boone added, "He pitched really well, and really shut us down. He was in command from the get-go."

And Miguel Andujar said, through his Spanish-to-English interpreter, "He was executing pitches, locating them, and spotting them as good as you can." Andujar did not say whether he suspected that Kikuchi was cheating.

Since the 1921 season, it has been against the rules for pitchers to put any foreign substance on the ball. Such illegal pitches all get put under the umbrella term "spitball." Common substances have been the aforementioned pine tar, Vaseline, various forms of grease, and, yes, the pitcher's own saliva. The last notable pitcher to be punished for it was -- big surprise -- Michael Pineda of the Yankees, against the Boston Red Sox. Yes, he was wrong, but just imagine a Boston pitcher getting suspended for doing it against the Yankees.

Don't hold your breath. After all, as we have seen -- through illegal pitches, purpose pitches, sign stealing, performance-enhancing drugs, you name it: It ain't cheating if you don't get caught, and it officially ain't cheating if you do it against the Yankees.

Those of us of a certain age know the George Brett pine tar bat of 1983 not as one of baseball's legends, but as something that happened, right before our eyes on WPIX-Channel 11. He was rightly punished for it by the umpires, and the President of the American League, Lee MacPhail, instead of supporting his umpires, overturned their call, and allowed the home run to stand and the Kansas City Royals to win the game.

Anyway...

The 4-game series concludes tonight. J.A. Happ starts against Mike Leake.