HEAD UMPIRE: UMPS ARE ALLOWED TO CHECK WITHOUT BEING ASKED--NY Times

"Can an umpire go to the mound without being asked? "I'm not sure," said Hirschbeck, a veteran umpire.

• Mike Port, Major League Baseball's vice president in charge of umpires, said they can. "Umpires can initiate an inspection if they have good reason to believe there is something going on," he said.

Based on television clips, Rogers apparently pitched at least parts of his three postseason starts with a dirty left hand. But some new developments have come to light.

• The Cardinals apparently suspected almost from the start of the game that Rogers was up to something. Jose Oquendo, the Cardinals' third-base coach, mentioned it in the first inning to John Hirschbeck, the third-base umpire.

"He said, "We think he's got something on his hand, ” Hirschbeck said in a telephone interview last week. "I said: "You guys have to formally ask us to look at it. We're not going to go out there and start searching the guy. But Tony never asked us."

The umpires were waiting for a request from Tony La Russa, the St. Louis manager, who explained that he didn't ask them to check Rogers on the mound because he didn't believe in playing the game that way.

Hirschbeck said, "An umpire normally doesn’t go out and inspect the pitcher unless he is asked to by the opposing manager."

• Can an umpire go to the mound without being asked? "I'm not sure," said Hirschbeck, a veteran umpire.

Still, a different chronology of the Rogers game has emerged. From various accounts on the night of the game, it was believed that Alfonso Marquez, the home-plate umpire, spoke with Rogers after the first inning and asked him to clean his hand.

• It turns out that Marquez spoke to Rogers after his second inning of pitching, by which time he had cleaned his hand.

Rogers said he was watching the bottom of the first inning on television in an alcove behind the dugout when he learned that the Fox announcers broadcasting the game were talking about his dirty hand.

Tim McCarver, the analyst, was alerted by someone in the Fox truck, and first mentioned it when Scott Rolen, the Cardinals' No. 4 hitter, went to the plate in the first inning.

When Rogers reached the dugout after the top of the first, teammates who had been in the clubhouse told him ‚“they‚’re making a big deal‚” about it on television. That was when he cleaned his hand.

• By the time Marquez told him to clean his hand, he already had, leaving nothing for the umpires to check even if they wanted to.

(And Bud Selig's response to this:) "I've talked to all the umpires about it,"Selig said. "They know what they're supposed to do. I don't have a complaint." from NY Times article by Murray Chass, 11/5/06, "Reassessing Hand That Rocked the Series."

• (No baseball fan will initiate a lawsuit against several complicit parties. Baseball fans like being bullied and lied to. They're quite malleable. Hey, it's one big party, no rules, just get the cash and run.) sm

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