Foreign substance enforcement will now be routine and at the discretion of the umpires, eliminating a major obstacle to spot-checking: the knowledge that no manager will blow the whistle on an opponent knowing his own pitchers are also halfway to Eddie Harris themselves.
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Even so, there’s a lot to like in the new guidelines. That culture, or perhaps more accurately that cultural breakdown, continues no matter what’s on the baseball itself. But in recent years, baseball has come to reflect a society that’s embraced Yunick’s Law: “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.” Just as a bombshell report on billionaires’ tax avoidance was received with mostly cynical hand-waving, baseball teams have bent and broken the rules with reckless abandon, as frequently lauded for their ingenuity as they were denounced for their perfidy. Instead, the league has skated by in a delicate state of détente, tacitly allowing limited grip enhancement with the understanding that if Michael Pineda showed up to pitch with a 5-inch pine tar booger on his neck, he’d get dinged. I’ve never seen I Think You Should Leave, but even I’m imagining Rob Manfred in a hot dog costume. That is, as good as it can look considering pitchers have been escalating their use of sticky substances to improve spin and grip for years now, and the league’s done nothing to stop it or change the incentives that fuel it. The league’s directive for a revamped enforcement plan, released Tuesday and set to begin June 21, actually looks pretty good.
![new sticky baseball new sticky baseball](https://www.baseballprospectus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/USATSI_16100763-scaled.jpg)
After nearly three years of subtweeting and finger-pointing, and a solid year’s worth of hand-wringing, MLB is finally cracking down on pitchers using foreign substances.