Scioscia Made the Worst Out of a Sticky Situation

These things happen when men don’t get their way, even the most earnest of men.

When you put enough of them on one field for long enough and attach the variables of balls and rules and videotape, then one of them will behave badly and another will take exception and, in the end, the umpire gets the glove.

So it was that one of the solid managers in the game and one of the great players of all time shouted and pointed, were separated by all their friends, and now might never speak to each other again.

Sorry, but Mike Scioscia was wrong on this, and wrong by a lot, and deserves the suspension he might get for starting the whole thing.

Frank Robinson may have his sleepy moments -- Curt Schilling took the occasion of a well-attended scouts dinner last winter to tell tales of Robinson nodding off on his managerial watch -- but he was alert and had his team’s interest in mind when he exposed Brendan Donnelly on Tuesday night.

Robinson won a baseball game, something managers don’t get to do very often. He rattled two pitchers -- Donnelly and the guy who came after him. He stood on the first base line, wrapped in “Paris Hilton sunglasses,” as Jim Bowden called them, and demanded the rules be followed. Nothing out of line.

“I’m doing my job, managing this team,” he said Wednesday evening.

After Scioscia had taken the requisite bite out of the umpires for the benefit of his pitcher’s reputation and the game’s outcome, it might have been a good time for acceptance, and not defiance. He had no more place in Robinson’s face than those sunglasses did.

Had he found the tactic petty, he could have had the pockets and headbands of every Washington National pitcher examined. All he had to do was ask. Instead, we got a show, and 50 players mingled around it, and one -- Jose Guillen, predictably -- got hauled away.

“I wanted to prepare him and prepare the umpires,” Scioscia said Wednesday.

Professional courtesy, we’re to believe.

“So the umpires would be aware of it,” he said.

And, well, to warn Robinson, who’d have no part in a challenge of his own pitchers’ gloves.

“I was making Frank know that that wasn’t going to intimidate what we were going to do,” Scioscia said.

Closer to the truth, probably.

See, there’s this rule that pitchers don’t get pine tar. They get around it sometimes. They smear it on their gloves, on their waistbands, other fun places. Sometimes, catchers store it for them. Scioscia called it, “common practice,” even “accepted practice.”

Apparently not for Robinson.

If indeed Scioscia knows that pine tar is common and accepted, then he should be the one challenging gloves, not Robinson. Scioscia is the principled man, the maker of teams, the adherer to the ways of the game. He demands standards and accountability in the manner of old-school managers, and carries himself with dignity, a hard lesson Guillen himself learned nine months ago.

It was not out of character for Scioscia to defend his pitcher, no matter the circumstance. It was, however, out of line for Scioscia to blame Robinson for managing the Nationals, meeting his own standards, and requiring his own accountability.

If Scioscia was going to be angry with someone, perhaps it should have been Donnelly, for getting caught and probably suspended, assuming that the glove arrives in New York. Three National sources insisted that videotapes of recent games showed Donnelly repeatedly sliding two fingers over the base of his glove while on the mound, which pretty much kills the Guillen conspiracy theory.

This wasn’t about retribution for Guillen, or Robinson’s way of ingratiating himself to his volatile outfielder, as the Angels suspected. It was about a few scouts, a curious coaching staff and a manager who picked the right time and place.

Donnelly, a good enough guy who found his way to the big leagues after years of trying, admitted he had been a closet pine tar user for a while, “off and on, as needed.” He said that when he lathered his glove with an illegal substance before Tuesday’s game, he did not think of it as cheating. The humanitarian in him, he said, was simply trying to keep the baseball away from “hitters’ necks.”

Regrettably, he said, “It’s a rule, yes, whatever.”

Scioscia is a fine manager. One of the best. He had a bad moment.

We can forgive him for that. It doesn’t sound as though Robinson can. That’s a shame, but it’s part of the game.

Just like pitchers and pine tar.