Pine tar has history in major league baseball dating back to the start. Batters have always used pine tar to give them an extra grip on the bat. A certain amount of pine tar is legal in major league baseball for batters to use because it gives them a better grip on the bat and prevents the bat slipping out of the batters hands, but not for pitchers to use because it gives them an unfair advantage. If a pitcher is caught using pine tar, it’s an automatic 10 game suspension. We all remember the Pine Tar controversy from the 2006 World Series when Kenny Rogers had a mysterious substance on his hands during his Game 2 masterpiece performance. The Tigers did not win that series, but if they had, there would be fans clamoring for an asterisk because of what Rogers might have done.
George Brett popularized the idea of putting extra pine tar on a part of one’s uniform so when one goes up to bat and needs extra pine tar, one could simply take some off the side of one’s uniform and put it on one’s bat. Brett made headline news when his game winning homerun was waved off July 24th 1983. Brett was called out for the final out of the game in the play ruled as the first game losing homerun in major league history. Umps’ reason for waving off the walk off was that Brett used more pine tar than what the MLB rule book allows. “A bat may not be covered by such a substance [pine tar] more than 18 inches from the tip of the handle” (Rule 1.10b). This incident is remembered as the “Pine Tar Incident.”
Brett continued to put extra pine tar on his jersey after that incident, but was probably more careful about the amount he put on his bat. When Brett retired, with him went the popularity of players putting pine tar on their uniform. However, today we see many players, such as Vladimir Guerrero who is the one best known for using it today, with tar on their helmets. How did this trend get brought back? That we can credit to the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the team that ended the curse and the team that repopularized pine tar.
In 2004, almost half of the Red Sox roster put pine tar on their helmet, with the same idea as George Brett, to make it more convenient to put it on your bat. Everyone from Manny Ramirez, who is credited with being the first member of that Sox team to put pine tar on his helmet, to Trot Nixon to Kevin Millar wore pine tar, sometimes even so thick that you couldn’t see the team’s logo. Today the Red Sox are no longer “Team Pine Tar, even though Manny still tars his helmet from time to time. That title goes to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
When Red Sox shortstop Orlando Cabrera left the Sox and went west to the Angels, he brought the pine tarring tradition with him. From Cabrera the idea spread to many members of the Angels team, including Vladimir Guerrero, and the Angels became “Team Pine Tar II.” In fact, it even spread to some pitchers as former Angels’ pitcher Brendan Donnelly was given a ten game suspension back in 2005 for using pine tar.
Part of Guerrero’s image is the pine tar, along with the wild swing and no batting gloves. It just seems fitting that a wild man, with a wild swing, and a wild game, would play with a tarred up helmet. They just go together. Now Vladdy doesn’t seem right if he’s not wearing the pine tar. And that tradition of using pine tar goes all the way back, to Orlando Cabrera, to the 2004 Boston Red Sox, and even back further to George Brett and his “Pine Tar incident”.
