Asked If He Doctored Baseballs, Yankees Star Stumbles in Response

“I don’t know quite how to answer that,” Gerrit Cole said when asked if he uses a sticky paste called Spider Tack to increase his spin rate.

Asked directly on Tuesday if he had used Spider Tack — a sticky paste that can greatly increase the spin on pitches — while on the mound, the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole stammered through an answer by citing the shadowy tradition of pitchers breaking rules to get an edge. “I don’t know quite how to answer that, to be honest,” Cole said on a Zoom conference with reporters, after searching roughly 15 seconds for an answer. “I mean, there are customs and practices that have been passed down from older players to younger players from the last generation of players to this generation of players. I think there are some things that are certainly out of bounds in that regard, and I’ve stood pretty firm in terms of that, in terms of the communication between our peers and whatnot.” He added: “This is important to a lot of people that love the game, including the players, including fans, including teams. If M.L.B. wants to legislate some more stuff, that’s a conversation we can have, because ultimately we should all be pulling in the same direction on this.”