Chances are, youve heard a lot about baseballs sticky i sue lately. Rumors of "crackdowns" and mentions of "foreign substances" and "cheating" have been common on social media.But whats it really all about? Lets take a look. Its always been illegal for a pitcher to apply pretty much anything to a baseball in an effort to get more movement on the ball, but for the most part its been a rule without much teeth, just an occasional suspension here or there when a pitcher blatantly breaks the rules and an opposing manager asks the umpire to check.Thats ending soon(ish).Baseball announced this past offseason that it was taking a closer look at the i sue, and spent the first few months of the season collecting baseballs from pitchers acro s the sport Mitchell Schwartz Jersey not just Trevor Bauer in an attempt to get a handle on how widespread the problem actually is. that a plan is being "swiftly advanced" to start the actual cracking-down proce s, po sibly being implemented as soon as "10 days to two weeks," which would start June 15.MORE: Exactly how it will work hasnt been revealed. Josh Donaldson, a former MVP, has an idea, though."If you want to clean the game up because to me, this is going to be the next steroids of baseball ordeal, because it is cheating and it is performance-enhancing the only way they get it through and to get it out of the game is if they get checked every half-inning," . "If a new pitcher comes out, they get checked immediately by the umpire. Once they start doing that, itll be gone, and youre going to start seeing offense come back into the game."Checking every half-inning isnt going to help pace-of-play i sues in the short term, but if the Tanoh Kpassagnon Jersey goal is to get rid of the sticky stuff, maybe thats a short-term price MLB is willing to pay."They want to make it so whatever we do, we do it consistently, so it doesnt look were targeting any one pitcher, which I think is very important," . "Baseball wants everything to be above board." The tenet of fair play says every player is operating with the same equipment, with the same set of rules. So when it comes to pitchers, nothing other than a short list of approved items can be used or added to a baseball. All MLB baseballs are rubbed up with mud from a secret spot on a tributary of the Delaware River, so theyre not super slippery. Pitchers are allowed to use a bag with rosin a sticky substance made from fir tree sap to get a little extra grip. The bags are behind the mound at all times.But heres the thing: Pitchers have always tried to cheat. Not every pitcher, of course, but its not a stretch to say that in every single MLB season, at least some pitchers have tried to circumvent the rules to add a little movement to the baseball. In some cases, especially in the first century of the sport Juan Thornhill Jersey , the idea was to either scuff up the surface of the baseball or add something to the surface of the ball to add movement. A baseball with uniform leather/seams will move in a way thats familiar to the pitchers and the hitters. But one thats scuffed or cut or otherwise altered will move in an unpredictable way, and that unpredictability is a huge benefit for the pitcher.But thats not the case with this current "crisis." This is about grip, especially on four-seam fastballs. Added grip means added spin, and thatmeans added movement. Added grip also means pitchers can throw harder because they have more control of the baseball as it's leaving their hand. That extra velocity means extra spin and extra movement, and extra movement means mi sed bats and baffled hitters, which means more strikeouts for pitchers.Think of it this way: Relying on the Delaware River mud and rosin for grip is like driving a go-cart. They get the job done, kind of. But the new stuff pitchers are using, the reason were having this conversation today? Theyre like driving a damn IndyCar vehicle. This, folks, is a loaded question. Lets start with this: MLB has a long history of ignoring a problem until it just becomes too much to ignore. Its not just this current administration. The steroid era is the most recent parallel. Steroids were a part of the game for years, and MLB didnt really do anything to try to stop the use, despite the known health risks. It wasnt until records started to fall big, huge important records that MLB finally started to take steps to addre s the i sue. You can bet that if Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa Jordan Lucas Jersey had stalled out at 55 home runs in the summer of 1998 and never reached the Maris/Ruth levels, things would have been different. Same thing if Barry Bonds never approached Hank Aarons career total. But they did, and then baseball acted.Youre seeing the same things now. Strikeout numbers have been up for the past decade-plus, but theyre reaching mind-boggling levels now, levels that cant be explained away with mentions of launch angles and hitter approaches. Think about this: In his storied career, strikeout king Nolan Ryan topped the 11.0 K/9 mark twice in 27 seasons. In 2020, there were 17 pitchers with at least nine starts who had a K/9 of 11.0 or better. And theres this: The MLB-wide strikeout percentage for batters last season was 23.4 percent; in 2021, its up to 24.1 percent. Read that again. Basically, one of every four plate appearances ends with a strikeout. Thats not good for the game. And people will point to the no-hitters, too six in the first two months of the season. Thats a good talking point, but the truth is these new crackdowns were coming before those no-hitters happened.Baseball wasnt worried so much about the cheating itself; baseball only really became concerned when the cheaters became too good at the cheating.Too much blame is going to be heaped on the pitchers who are caught with substances, or when it's noticed that spin rates drop dramatically. That sucks, honestly. MLB has turned a blind eye to the situation for so long that it's just been an accepted part of the sport. We drew a parallel to PEDs, but let's be clear: This doesn't have Armani Watts Jersey a moral element like steroids. There's no health component. For decades, a thing was allowed to happen, and now suddenly it's not. That's on MLB.And theres also this: The Collective Bargaining Agreement between MLB and the MLB Players A sociation expires on Dec. 1, and the negotiations are not going to be pretty. Youll certainly hear talk of work stoppages, and its not unrealistic to think that might happen. And one tried-and-true tactic heading into a contentious negotiation is to attempt to erode unity on the other side. In this case, the theory goes, in hopes that it will impact the MLBPAs solidarity. MLB powers-that-be will deny it to their last breaths, of course. The rosin bag, as you know, is legal. Encouraged, even. Pitchers without any sort of grip tend to throw baseballs that accidentally str