Major League Baseball fires a high hard one at its latest sticky situation

In its latest attempt to slow down already interminably long games, Major League Baseball is instituting a series of anti-pitcher procedures to expand the prohibition of “foreign substances,” strengthening Rule 3.01 that has been in place for 101 years.
“In 1947 the average game, including those in extra innings, lasted two hours and eleven minutes,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “By the mid-1950s to the late 1970s they were up to two-and-a-half hours, give or take a couple of minutes. Now we’re past three hours and counting.
“My feeling is, the more baseball, the better. I think three-and-a-half hours is definitely doable and a thorough examining of pitchers – and maybe everyone else – is the best way to get there,” Manfred said.
To that end, baseball will set up a tent, similar to the sideline tent NFL teams began using several years ago to examine players injured during games. In this case, an umpire, usually the crew chief, will, at his discretion, “do an in-tent strip search and a licensed polygraph examiner will simultaneously conduct a lie-detector test of each team’s starting pitcher at least once while he is in the game,” according to the new addendum to Rule 3.01.
Relief pitchers will be similarly examined at the end of an inning when they entered the game or when they leave a game. Their hats and gloves also will be checked and may be confiscated and sent to a designated laboratory for further examination.
Catchers and other position players and their equipment also will be subject to spot checks and may be ejected along with the pitcher if a foreign substance is found on a ball they have touched.
The ejection of any player, along with his manager, bench coach or other coach, and clubhouse attendant (for home games) or the offending team’s traveling secretary (for road games), will carry with it an automatic minimum 10-game suspension which can be increased depending on the foreign substance discovered during on-field examinations or lab tests.
In the same way that current in-game replays are conducted, the ejected player will have the right of “immediate appeal” which will be heard remotely by Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry.
Rule 3.01 says “no player shall intentionally discolor or damage the ball by rubbing it with soil, rosin, paraffin, licorice, sand-paper, emery-paper or any other foreign substance.”
The phrase “foreign substance” is likely to be challenged by any number of pitchers who, whether they admit it or not, use products from the extremely sticky Spider Tack (used primarily by weightlifters and wheelchair athletes) to the far more widespread combination of rosin and sunscreen to control the spin rate of their pitches, thus improving the ball’s speed and motion.
“Foreign, my ass,” outspoken Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer snapped. “Spider Tack’s made in Colorado. … You want to talk about foreign substances? What about (Yankees closer) Aroldis Chapman? All that sweat? That’s Cuban sweat. What about (Padres starter) Yu Darvish? When he licks his fingers between pitches? That’s Japanese saliva.”
In 1920 baseball outlawed what it called “foreign substances” including the spitball, although 17 pitchers who depended upon it were allowed to use it until they retired.
The last pitcher to legally throw a spitter was Burleigh Grimes, who retired after the 1934 season. Manfred said he is debating whether – or how long – to suspend Grimes and fellow spitballer Red Faber from the Hall of Fame.