Pee Wee Reese would load up spitballs for Don Drysdale, away from the watchful eye of umpires.
Yankees catcher Elston Howard was said to have sharpened the buckles on his shin guards, which he used to gouge baseballs as he drew back his arm for return throws to the pitcher.
Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills kept an emery board in his glove with which to scuff balls before returning them to the mound. Reds shortstop Davey Concepcion was rumored to have a bent eyelet on his glove’s heel for much the same purpose.
There were first basemen who put tacks in their gloves and third basemen who put Vaseline on their palms to offer assistance in the same, surreptitious vein.
So should we be surprised, really, if Yadier Molina is doing something similar for his pitchers?
That’s the simplest explanation for what happened yesterday, when a pitch from Brett Cecil bounced in front of the plate and ended up adhered to Molina’s chest protector as the increasingly frantic catcher looked around for the lost baseball. Application of pine tar helps pitchers increase the movement of breaking pitches (which Cecil’s offering was), but it also tends to make things … sticky.
(Watch the whole thing here.)
Yadi knows exactly what happened. So does Cecil. So, likely, does Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, himself a former catcher. When asked about it after the game, however, they offered little more than a collective Huh?
Catchers can legally apply pine tar to their shin guards, the better to increase their ability to grip the ball. It’s legal because catchers have no interest in making their own throws do funky things, and on cold or wet nights grip can be vital. Salvador Perez was outed for this very thing during the 2015 World Series, and the news barely made a ripple. Had Molina offered an excuse somewhere along those lines it would have made some sense. Instead, he said this:
“Do I put anything on my chest protector? No. That’s a dumb question.”
Which leads to the clear impression that he’s covering something up on behalf of his pitcher. Cecil didn’t comment, because Cecil took off after the game without speaking to reporters.
Upon being removed from Molina’s chest the ball left a white smudge—a clear indicator for sleuths around the ballpark. But because Cubs manager Joe Maddon never requested that the ball, Molina or Cecil be checked by the umpires, the game continued apace and everybody went on their merry ways.
If Cecil was cheating, he has a rich history of pitchers to emulate. Over just the last two seasons, Mike Fiers was accused of using pine tar during a no-hitter, Brian Matusz was suspended for hiding a foreign substance on his arm and Brewers reliever Will Smith was busted for similar reasons. There was also, of course, the infamous Michael Pineda affair, which came in two parts.
What’s left now, mostly (unless somebody in the know decides to talk) is for Cecil to knock off any extracurricular activities until the heat dies down. Same for Molina. Because, really, nobody around baseball really cares about pitchers using pine tar (there are likely some on every team who do) until the moment that public attention forces them to decry cheaters cheaters and their cheating ways.
The Baseball Codes 
Steve Yeager also was long rumored for sharpening shin guard buckles and surreptitious cutting for Don Sutton in particular. https://www.si.com/vault/1981/04/13/825541/tricks-of-the-trade-loaded-bats-phantom-dps-and-balls-doctored-with-everything-from-flour-to-fly-line-cleaner-may-be-illegit-but-theyre-as-much-a-part-of-the-grand-old-game-as-well-the-spitter
It all goes to show that cheating in baseball is widely tolerated so long as it isn’t too obvious, with the caveat that those who are caught knock it off for a while. Every team does it to some degree, so nobody wants to be too hard-line about it.
Should chronic cheaters be barred from the Hall of Fame? That’s a “loaded” question, as you know. Some known cheaters are in the Hall. Compare to players who took steroids, or who gambled (e.g. Rose). So why isn’t someone who spent years doctoring the baseball in the same category as someone who took muscle builders? Both gained an unfair advantage.
The thing is, baseball doesn’t really disapprove of cheating — only the perception of it. Hall of Famers who scuffed, greased, corked or greenied are no different than many of their peers. Forget for a moment outliers like Gaylord Perry; a more subtle approach to cheating has pervaded the sport nearly from the beginning. Guys look to get an edge anywhere they can, and the lay of the land dictates (as it always has) that the only real constraint is subtlety in one’s practice.
If one is insufficiently subtle, it then behooves him to knock things off for a while. (As Dusty Baker told me many years ago, “If you get caught, quit. That’s the deal. If you get caught you have to stop.” He was speaking about sign stealing — another form of “cheating” — but may as well have been addressing the topic at large.