Searching for clues as to why Rogers got off clean

Fans were buried in blankets. Managers were swallowed in mittens. Players were hidden in ski caps.

But on a bone-chilling Sunday night at the World Series, nothing was seemingly covered up more than the bare left hand of Kenny Rogers.

In the first inning of the Detroit Tigers’ eventual 3-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, a national television audience saw a dark splotch at the base of Rogers’ pitching hand.

With a dark and sticky tint, it looked like illegal pine tar.

With Rogers’ spinning pitches, it acted like illegal pine tar.

Within moments, some Cardinals watching on the clubhouse television rushed to their manager and claimed it was definitely illegal pine tar.

But, amazing, perhaps conspiratorially, for the first time in the history of pine tar, nothing stuck.

Tony La Russa, the Cardinals’ manager who is close friends with Tigers Manager Jim Leyland, did not demand that Rogers be searched.

The umpires, who apparently never saw the splotch, did not initiate a search.

In the Tigers’ dugout in the middle of the first inning, it appeared that teammate Brandon Inge whispered something to Rogers about the hand.

Rogers disappeared for a moment, returned to the mound later with a clean hand, and eventually threw eight shutout innings in evening the series at one game apiece.

While, incidentally, extending the most mystifying postseason performance in recent baseball history.

Before October, in nine postseason appearances, Rogers had an 0-3 record with a 9.15 earned-run average.

Since October, in three postseason starts, he has gone 3-0 with an 0.00 ERA in 23 innings.

You read that right. He has gone from possessing one of the worst records in postseason history to owning the third-longest scoreless innings streak in postseason history.

He has gone from a guy castigated for shoving a cameraman to a guy celebrating for punching the air in triumph.

Maturing? Not quite. At 41, he becomes the oldest starting pitcher to win a World Series game in history.

Cheating? Who knows? Even after the evidence was as blatant as dozens of wild Cardinals swings, it is a question that amazingly nobody wanted to broach.

“It’s not important to talk about,” La Russa said afterward.

Say what?

“Like I said, it’s not important,” he said. “I wouldn’t discuss it. When a guy pitches like that, as a team, we don’t take things away from anybody.”

Funny, but La Russa has spent his career fighting perceived injustices, backing his players beyond all reason, challenging anyone who he feels is treating his team unfairly.

Just last week, he publicly scolded reporters for accurately reporting a controversial quote by Albert Pujols, and threatened to suggest that Pujols stop talking.

Ordering such a vow of silence would have been crazy. But ordering an immediate search of Rogers on Sunday night would have been common sense.

Taking the video evidence of pine tar and using it as a tool to both physically and mentally undress a hot pitcher would have just been good baseball.

Of course, requesting this type of in-game investigation is usually considered an insult to the opposing manager.

La Russa and Leyland being such old and dear friends, perhaps that was an insult that La Russa was unwilling to make?

“I don’t know exactly what was going on, but I’m assuming [Tony] wasn’t sure or else, you know ...,” Leyland said.

Amazingly, searching Rogers was also a risk that the umpires were unwilling to take.

According to Steve Palermo, an umpire supervisor, the crew heard La Russa’s initial complaint and simply asked Rogers to wash his hands between innings.

But according to Rogers, the umpires never even mentioned the splotch.

“It was a big clump of dirt and I wiped it off,” Rogers said. “ I didn’t know it was there and [teammates] told me and I took it off, and it wasn’t a big deal.”

It didn’t look remotely like dirt. If it did, the Cardinals wouldn’t have come running to their manager.

“It looked like pine tar,” said Cardinals second baseman Aaron Miles. “When it’s this cold out, gloves are slick and balls are slick and guys sometimes try to put something on the ball ... maybe guys try to do something.”

When pressed to criticize Rogers, however, Miles followed his manager’s lead and backed off.

“Who knows?” he said. “He stayed in the game and they didn’t throw him out, did they?”

Not like the Dodgers’ Jay Howell in 1988. Remember? On a similarly wet and cold day in New York during the National League Championship Series, Howell was caught with pine tar on his glove and suspended for two games.

Howell claimed he was just trying to grip the ball, something which Rogers did marvelously all night.

Considering he was not searched, could the pine tar have remained in his glove the entire night? Has pine tar been in his glove the entire postseason?

Unfair questions, perhaps, but questions that should have been answered on a night when baseball acted like some secret society, some ugly fraternity, hazing honor and integrity in the process.