TIGERS' ROGERS AGREES TO FULL BODY CAVITY SEARCH BEFORE GAME 5 START ST. LOUIS, Missouri. Detroit's Kenny Rogers, the oldest starting pitcher to win his first career postseason game but also the most immature, agreed with MLB commissioner Bud Selig to undergo a full body cavity search before taking the mound in game five of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. 
"C'mon--I double-dog-dare you!"
"Fine," said Rogers, "but I'm not cleaning up my locker."
Rogers was accused of using a foreign substance to "doctor" a baseball in the Tigers win over the Cardinals in game two, but Selig said results of tests were inconclusive. "It may have been foreign to you, but it was native to Kenny." 
Selig: "It was gross."
Rogers has had discipline problems in the past, attacking two photographers before a 2005 game against the Los Angeles Angels. Criminal assault charges against him were reduced when he agreed to complete an anger management course and had one of the photographers' heads mounted for display in his den. 
"I did not pick my nose, you doofus!"
"I admit I had something on my hand," said Rogers as he pushed a reporter and an elderly woman seeking an autograph for her terminally-ill grandson to the ground. "I'm not going to tell you where it came from."
Bill Gluck, current president of the Society for American Baseball Research or "SABRE", said that the application of slippery or sticky substances to baseballs by pitchers is a common occurrence, and was in fact legal during the 19th century. "Guys like Joe 'Milk Train' Evans of the Cleveland Blue Sox would apply earwax, snot, or even toe jam to make a pitch dip precipitously as it approached the plate." 
"Milk Train" Evans: Pioneer in use of goopy crud.
Rogers' battery mate Ivan Rodriguez, the first Hispanic-Russian-American catcher to play in the World Series, denied that Rogers used smegma or gradu. "It was a form of phlegm, but it wasn't a booger," he said. "I don't want to get into specifics, but when Kenny pitches I don't need to use pine tar." 
Rodriguez: "With Kenny pitching, I don't need pine tar!"
Rogers' history of aggressive behavior towards the media was cited by Baseball Tonight reporter Mike Olson as the reason reporters were reluctant to press him on the issue of the mysterious brown spot on his hand. "One time I asked him how he was feeling, and he said my wife wears her underwear for two days in a row, which is not true," said Olson. "Another time I asked him what time it was, and he threatened to come to my house and kill my gecko." 
"He's like foaming at the mouth, yelling 'You want a piece of me?'"
Whatever Rogers used, it worked, as he extended his post-season scoreless pitching string to twenty-four and a third innings, and increased his league leading Reporter Punch-Out Average to 2.41 per game.
Copyright 2006, Con Chapman
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