That, plus whatever left the curious smudge on the meaty part of his palm below the left thumb for the first inning Sunday night.

Cheating in Mr. Rogers' neighbourhood?

Say it ain't so _ which is what one witness after another testified to moments after the Tigers' 41-year-old left-hander bamboozled the St. Louis Cardinals for eight innings en route to a 3-1 win that turned this into a much-livelier World Series.

``It was a big clump of dirt, and I wiped it off,'' he said Sunday night after Game 2. ``I didn't know it was there and they told me and I took it off, and it wasn't a big deal.''

``He washed his hands, came out the second inning,'' Tigers manager Jim Leyland said, ``and he was pretty clean the rest of the way.''

``It's not important to talk about,'' St. Louis manager Tony La Russa said. ``I wouldn't discuss it. When a guy pitches like that, as a team, we don't take things away from anybody.''

When all that testimony still failed to satisfy a skeptical assembly of scribes, someone asked umpires' supervisor Steve Palermo how his crew could be certain it was nothing more than dirt _ which is not considered a foreign substance under the rules of baseball _ on Rogers' palm.

``This is not their first summer away from home,'' Palermo said with a straight face.

The funny thing is that the first inning was the only one in which Rogers had anything resembling a problem. He walked Albert Pujols with two out, yielded a single to Scott Rolen, ended it by enticing Juan Encarnacion into grounding back to the mound and set down the next nine Cardinals he faced.

Rogers had never lasted beyond the fifth in all five of his previous post-season starts. But since arriving in Detroit this year, and making all three of his playoff starts at home, he's done a fair imitation of Christy Mathewson. In fact, Mathewson's record of 27 scoreless innings is now just four innings from Rogers' grasp.

``I'm no Christy Mathewson, that's for sure'' Rogers said with a chuckle, ``but I've had scoreless streaks before.''

None quite like this one, though.

Let's assume _ at least for the moment _ that the verdict in ``Smudgegate'' is the right one. Either way, it left a lot of people scrambling to explain how Rogers _ his denial aside _ reinvented himself as the ghost of Mathewson of post-seasons past.

He cited maturity, and the knowledge that a pitcher his age gets fewer and fewer chances to shape his legacy.

``If you worry about failure, it's coming. And sometimes, you get caught up in that as an athlete,'' Rogers said. ``I'm focusing on every pitch, every hitter, I'm not looking past an out or an inning.''

Leyland, though, was much more specific. He zeroed in on a chance to get even with the team that lured Rogers to New York with a fat contract and the demanding fans that ran him out of town too quickly afterward.

``I think probably the big thing was the Yankee game,'' the manager said, referring to Rogers' sterling 7 2/3 innings against New York in Game 3 of the division series, the performance that launched the left-hander's post-season streak.

``I think he was so pumped up to pitch against the Yankees, he had some past experience there, some history, most of it good and I guess, some not so good. For whatever reason, that Yankee series got him pumped up like I've never seen a pitcher.

``In fact,'' Leyland said, ``it makes me nervous to see someone that pumped up.''

If so, considering Leyland's smoking habit, Rogers' shaky first inning must have required at least three cigarettes. The Gambler came out steaming on a night when the game-time temperature was 44 degrees and teammate Placido Polanco, who was wearing a hooded undershirt beneath his cap, looked like he was dressed to go snowmobiling. The pitcher pumped his fist with every inning-ending out and seemed to be choreographing his outfielders' movements every time they took off in pursuit of a Cardinal fly ball.

But Leyland had the adrenaline business right. The more Rogers got worked up, the faster he started throwing. His breaking ball was on much of the night, but he kept pushing the radar gun higher with fastballs, cracking the 90-mph barrier in the sixth inning and piling them on through a 99-pitch evening.

The pitches that everybody talked about afterward, though, were the 18 that Rogers threw in the first inning with that smudge still on his hand. Since baseball began, pitchers have scuffed baseballs with belt buckles, wedding rings and emery boards, slathered them with spit, Vaseline, shaving cream and hair gel _ or pretended to as a way to put hitters off-balance.

``If it distracts someone,'' Rogers said, ``I'd do anything to distract anybody. But I think after the first inning, it was fine. I don't think anybody had a problem with anything.''

After the first inning, no.

But someone in the St. Louis clubhouse watching the telecast saw what the rest of the nation did _ Fox showed a closeup of the smudge _ then passed word to the dugout. That set the cleanup in motion and presumably put the Cardinals' fear to rest.

Asked afterward whether he believed Rogers had deliberately put anything on the ball, Cardinals second baseman Aaron Miles said simply, ``No.''

But a second later, he curiously added, ``Pine tar is a funny thing. You can give somebody a high-five after he hits a home run and if he's got it on his hand, you'll have it on your hand.''