Two weeks ago, when New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole didn’t deny using Spider Tack to increase his spin on pitches, it was a big day in baseball.
Clips of him sputtering through an interminable silence — and stammering through an explanation about “customs” and “generations” and the “conversations” they could be having if Major League Baseball decided it wanted to “legislate some more stuff” — flew around the internet, turning baseball’s dirty little secret into a front-page scandal. Sticky stuff has been the lead story in the sport ever since, as a crackdown on the illegal use of long-ignored foreign substances is set to go into effect on Monday.