You dig to get the dirt on Rogers, and you still come up empty

DETROIT -- At age 41 and with a history of postseason failings in his rear-view mirror, Kenny Rogers suddenly has become as automatic as one of Detroit's famous assembly lines, as powerful as a V-8 engine.

Being that his fastball typically wouldn't dent a PT Cruiser and that there is every opportunity for him to be clobbered if his finesse pitches are off even by a fraction, watching this development is as stunning as any individual growth chart that we've seen in several postseasons.

There's much ado about the goo -- or whatever that stuff is on Kenny Rogers' hand. (US PRESSWIRE)

Or, at least as jarring as watching the flurry of activity, parsed statements, lies, half-truths and obstruction that emerged during and after Rogers' latest masterpiece, a 3-1 roasting of St. Louis in Game 2 of the World Series on a raw Sunday night during which the Tigers evened the series.

Let's get one thing clear first: Whatever Rogers is doing these days, he has perfected it.

In baffling the Cardinals -- he limited them to five base runners in eight innings, only one of whom even advanced to second base -- he extended his postseason scoreless streak to 23 consecutive innings in 2006.

That ranks tied for third all-time along with Los Angeles' Jerry Reuss (1981), just behind Lew Burdette's 24 for the Milwaukee Braves in 1957, and closing in on Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson's 27 for the New York Giants in 1905.

Rogers is on deck to blow past all of them if this series extends to Game 6 -- he's scheduled to take the ball next in that contest on Saturday, back here in Detroit.

Now, back to the whatever he's doing part. ...

Television cameras caught him pitching the first inning with a big clump of brown something or other on his left hand.

It had all the appearances of a gob of pine tar, which would help him grip the ball on a wet and raw evening, maybe give some extra snap to his breaking pitches.

It also is completely illegal, punishable by ejection and 10-game suspension.

But in the biggest mystery this side of anything written by James Lee Burke, the spot mostly disappeared -- but not completely -- from Rogers' hand after the first inning. And there were at least four different between-innings meetings between the umpires and various personnel -- involving both managers. Yet after the game, everybody took the old pretend-not-to-see-the-elephant-in-the-room stance.

That substance on Rogers' hand, seen by millions of television viewers?