Asked directly on Tuesday if he had used Spider Tack — a sticky paste that can greatly increase the spin on pitches — while on the mound, the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole stammered through an answer by citing the shadowy tradition of pitchers breaking rules to get an edge.
“I don’t know quite how to answer that, to be honest,” Cole said on a Zoom conference with reporters, after searching roughly 15 seconds for an answer. “I mean, there are customs and practices that have been passed down from older players to younger players from the last generation of players to this generation of players.