Pine tar or dirt? We might never know.
Pineda took a two-hit shutout into the seventh inning, and Jacoby Ellsbury an RBI single off old roommate Clay Bucholtz in his first game against the Red Sox. The Yankees' win left a bit of a mystery, Were Pineda's pitches plain old nasty, or was something more sinister involved?
"It's dirt," Pineda said. "Between the innings, I'm sweating too much, my hand. I'm putting dirt, I'm grasping the dirt, I'm not using pine tar."
Ellsbury drew all the pregame attention after switching sides in the rivalry during the offseason. But it was the dark brown, seemingly tacky substance on the lower palm of Pineda's right hand that became the focus.
Close-up camera shots showed Pineda pitching during the early innings with something on his hand, and there was speculation it was pine tar to help him get a better grip on a chilly night. The game was never stopped for an umpire to examine him, and it whatever it was, it was gone by the fifth.
"I became aware of it in the fourth inning through the video that someone had seen," Red Sox manager John Farrell said. "And then, when he came back out for the fifth inning, it looked, based on where it was told to me it was located, it looked like the palm of his right hand was clean."
