Ken Rosenthal gives a good recap of what happened. And ends with a snarky comment about Rogers.

"I'm no Christy Mathewson, that's for sure," Rogers said.

The validity of that statement, at least, was confirmed by FOXSports.com.

According to well-placed sources, Christy washed his hands.

Jayson Stark wonders why Rogers was so defensive

All righty then. So that's the end of it. Right? A clump of dirt happened to appear on his pitching hand, and he wiped it off, and then went back to being Sandy Koufax.

Or maybe not.

Because his own manager, Mr. Jim Leyland, said the umpires "made Kenny wash his hands." And Steve Palermo, an MLB umpiring supervisor, reported that Marquez "asked Kenny to remove that dirt, so there wouldn't be any question as far as that controversy."

Great. Took care of that controversy stuff in no time flat, didn't they? Cleared it right up.

So this should be the point where we should be moving on to talk about Rogers' sensational evening on the old pitcher's mound, right? Nope. Sorry. Not quite yet.

Because if Rogers was so darned innocent, how come he was trying so hard to deny everything except his pitch count?

ESPN says that Rogers had a similar substace on his hand when he pitched against the A's, and provides the opinions of some former pitchers.

"The pine tar, I'm told, can give the ball more rotation. It's useless for the fastball, but with the breaking pitches it can help with the movement and spin."

"When your hands get cold, you can't put spin on the ball, because the ball slips out of your hands," the pitcher said. "It also changes your release point. It changes the release point because the ball wants to come out of your hands sooner so it makes the ball go high, with less spin. So it's higher in the strike zone, or not even a strike, and with less movement. But once you use something that's a little stickier, like pine tar or chewing tobacco and gum, or hair gel, anything that makes your hand look sticky or feel sticky, it brings your release point back to normal. It also puts the same spin on the ball because you have a better grip.

"The problem is there's different substances that don't have a color to them and also don't wear off after awhile. Because when you throw more than 10-15 pitches in an inning, certain things start to wear away, and all of a sudden you're throwing your most important pitches with your least amount of stuff."