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.  But we were told after the game that they told him to wash his hand.  This seems fishy, why would he have to wash his hand if nothing was illegal about it?

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.  Well I think it is important and this entire post season is tainted now.  Attached are some pictures of Rogers pitching against the Yankees.  This fact alone makes me think TLR regrets his decision.