Will Smith was gettin’ sticky with it Thursday night.
The Milwaukee Brewers left-hander was ejected from a game against the Atlanta Braves after umpires investigated the southpaw and found a foreign substance on his right arm. The umpiring crew was tipped off by Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez, who went to the umpiring crew in the bottom of the seventh inning and asked them to check Smith.
The umpires obliged, and they found a poorly hidden patch of what looked to be pine tar on the forearm of Smith’s glove hand. The lefty was quickly ejected and likely faces supplemental discipline from Major League Baseball. Judging by his reaction, he was pretty peeved at the Braves for ratting on him.
As you can see in the video, Smith really didn’t do a very good job of hiding the sticky substance.
“It was about as plain as it could be,” Gonzalez told reporters, per The Associated Press. “It’s pretty blatant. Really. It’s glistening through the lights. You could see it in the dugout.”
Umpire crew chief Jim Joyce admitted he had no choice.
“I’m not going to make (the ejection) dramatic, because it is what it is and it’s clear cut,” Joyce told a pool reporter, according to The Associated Press. “Like I told Craig, ‘I have no recourse. This is immediate and fatal, unfortunately.'”
Smith insisted that mixture wasn’t pine tar, rather it was a combination of sunscreen and rosin.
“It was chilly and kind of windy,” Smith told reporters. “I had rosin and sunscreen on my arm. I just forgot to wipe it off before I went out and pitched. I had to kind of get ready in a hurry. I just forgot. That’s it.”
We’re guessing MLB won’t view that way, though. New York Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda was suspended 10 games last season for using pine tar during a game against the Boston Red Sox.
Thumbnail photo via John Bazemore/Associated Press
