MLB’s Sticky Situation: Spider Tack, Pelican Grip and Baseball’s Open Secret

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The worst-kept secret in baseball is being brought to light. With batting averages at an all-time low and strikeouts at an all-time high, Major League Baseball is cracking down on pitchers using foreign substances to get a better grip on the ball. Buster Olney helps us understand why it took so long for MLB to enforce these rules, and why the gentleman’s agreement that tolerated the practice for years no longer holds. It’s an all-too-familiar story in a sport where the steroid era proved that players will always seek any available competitive edge. Then, Montreal native Ariel Helwani makes the case for why we should jump on the Montreal Canadiens bandwagon, as they’re one series away from reaching the Stanley Cup Finals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	How do you ever use SpiderTap while pigeon?
0:07.0	Um, I don't...
0:09.0	I don't know if, uh, I don't know if, uh, I don't know quite, I don't quite know how to answer that, to be honest.
0:23.6	That is Garrett Cole, Ace of the Yankees, owner of a $324 million contract, now sounding like a kid who doesn't want to lie to his parents, but also doesn't want to come out and admit the truth.
0:43.0	That this season, as hitters are swinging and missing like never before, pitchers have been using sticky stuff,
0:50.7	absurdly sophisticated foreign substances to make their baseballs that much more unhittable.
0:57.0	Today, Buster Olney tells us exactly how pitchers have been doing this, and why MLB has decided,
1:04.0	at long last, that it wants to stick it to them.
1:09.0	I'm Pablo Torre.
1:12.5	It's Thursday, June 10th.
1:15.5	This is ESPN Daily.
1:23.6	Buster Olney, host of the Baseball Tonight podcast,
1:26.8	guy who's covered this game for 30-plus years.
1:29.6	We need to talk about this crackdown in Major League Baseball that we have never seen before, because as you've reported, pitchers are
1:35.1	going to be checked repeatedly and randomly for foreign substances by umpires under a plan that
1:39.9	looks like it'll be implemented within the next 10 days to two weeks.
1:49.0	So just how shocking was that news when you heard it from MLB?
1:54.8	Well, given the fact that baseball is historically a sport that moves slow,
1:59.8	to have it change this quickly in midseason is kind of shocking. And it tells you how concerned Major League
2:02.8	Baseball officials are about the product, about the diminished offense. But also, and I think
2:08.0	this is a really big factor, the underlying and growing anger of position players over what
2:14.7	they perceived to be a competitive advantage for pitchers.
	...

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