UPDATED….The penalty for Michael Pineda’s use of pine tar last night: A 10-game suspension. Thank you to the league for placing that penalty.
Last night at a local neighborhood meeting I talked baseball for a minute with a former state representative who lives in our neighborhood. Peter Bock once had a home just across from Miller Park when he served in the assembly. Knowing his love of the sport, and that the Brewers are pitching some fabulous games lately I asked him for thoughts. He was truly pleased with the opening weeks of the season, and like so many are basking in the all-American thrill of going to the ball park. He mentioned that his wife, Kathleen Falk, will join him for a game this weekend when the Chicago Cubs come to Milwaukee.
These are the type of sport discussions that take place all over the nation, and I am sure they make for many smiles, or with the case of Bock create a twinkle in his eye.
But this morning I find myself feeling unsettled with the news that made for some interesting front pages of New York City papers. What I read was not the stuff I want young impressionable kids to know about, or seasoned older guys to have to see as they reflect on what the game has meant in their lives.
Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda was ejected from Wednesday’s game against the Red Sox in the second inning when umpires found a swath of pine tar on his neck.
Major League rule 8.02 (b) prohibits a pitcher from using a foreign substance on the ball. Pineda now faces a suspension. In 2012, Tampa Bay pitcher Joel Peralta was suspended eight games after being found with pine tar on his glove.
After television cameras showed the pine tar below Pineda’s right ear, Red Sox manager John Farrell emerged from the dugout and asked home plate umpire Gerry Davis to check Pineda.
The four umpires went the mound and after a brief examination of Pineda that included touching his neck, he was ejected.
Where did the idea of playing fair and square go? My beef with Pineda is that many young boys looks up to baseball players and want to emulate them.
But as I ponder all this the old song recorded by Bill Anderson comes to mind. Where Have All Our Heroes Gone has a few lines that make my point.
This country needs a lotta things today friends
But it doesn’t need any one thing anymore than it needs some real heroes
Men who know what it means to be looked up to by a griny faced kid
Men who want to sign autograph books and not deal under the table
Men who are willing to play the game with the people who made them heroes
Men who don’t mind putting on a white hat and saying thank you and please
I wish I knew more men that I’d be proud of for my son to look up to and say
Daddy when I grow up I want to be just-like-him (Where have all our heroes gone)
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 
“Where did the idea of playing fair and square go?”
You make it sound as if the idea of playing fair and square just disappeared a week ago. Surely you know that baseball players use steroids. George Brett got caught using pine tar in 1983. Gaylord Nelson threw the spitball for decades. Fair and square is long gone.