Jamie Squire, Getty Images What was that on Kenny Rogers' pitching hand Sunday night and did it make a difference in his domination of the Cardinals? Click photo for larger image. More Coverage: Hot Topic: Bill Plaschke's view on Detroit's Kenny Rogers

For years, the mystery has been why he goes by the name Kenny Rogers. Nothing about him fits the name "Kenny." A Kenny plays smooth jazz. A Kenny joins up with Messina and sings mushy pop music. A Kenny marries and divorces Renee Zellweger and understands that he can't outrun the law.

Kenny Rogers, a Detroit pitcher, does not quite fit the name. He's just not that kind of Kenny emotional. He should be Ken Rogers. Or Kenneth. Or Butch. He is a man with a permanent stubble and unrelenting stubbornness. Sunday, on an icebox of a night, with freezing rain misting, with his 41-year-old bones throbbing and the baseballs feeling harder than diamonds, Rogers threw 99 dazzling pitches. He allowed two cheap hits. He pitched eight shutout innings. The Tigers beat the Cardinals, 3-1. The teams are now even -- one game apiece. Rogers pitched his team -- and a baseball town that loves him -- back into the heart of this World Series. Rogers has now thrown 23 scoreless innings this postseason.

His has been a different kind of pitching dominance. We've all seen pitchers dominate with their control, their power, their pitches. Christy Mathewson, who threw three shutouts in the 1905 World Series, confounded hitters with a pitch he called a fadeaway -- later to be called the screwball -- that broke hard away from left-handed hitters and seemed to attack the righties. Sandy Koufax beat them with high heat and curveballs that seemed to tumble out of the sky. Rogers, though, overwhelms with his will and experiences.

		Joe Posnanski writes for The Kansas City Star

"I've done as bad as you can do on the field," Rogers would say after the game, which sounds like an old blues song, no?

It's true that before this season Rogers' postseason ERA was 6.43. His one World Series appearance had been a disaster, a two-inning, five-run nightmare against the Atlanta Braves. His most famous moment as a baseball player, surely, had been the time he shoved two cameramen before a game in Texas.

And Sunday, he pitched like that old blues singer who had seen too much trouble. He pitched from the gut. He pitched with feeling. He threw a barrage of pitches that moved more than an Army family. He threw cutters that sank, and sinkers that cut, and change-ups and slower change-ups and the occasional fastball that rushed in with surprising quickness, like a cobra striking on one of those Nova television specials.

He also pitched with a little something on his left hand -- Dirt? Pine tar? Chocolate? -- and this sent everybody into hysterics. Fox Sports, of course, showed closeups of the hand. The Cardinals hitters complained to manager Tony La Russa that the ball was doing funny things. Then La Russa may or may not have complained to the umpires -- nobody seemed quite sure. The umpires may or may not have told Rogers to wash off his hand -- again, nobody seemed quite sure.

"They made Kenny wash his hands, and he washed his hands," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said.

"The home-plate umpire just asked Kenny to remove the dirt so there wouldn't be any controversy," umpire supervisor Steve Palermo said.

"No," Rogers said when asked whether the umpire told him to wash his hands. He explained it was just a "big clump of dirt." It was not a very satisfying explanation. Whatever, the dirt on the hand seemed to have the Cardinals' heads spinning.

Rogers is one of the most intriguing figures in baseball. He was a 39th-round pick in the 1982 draft, and he told his wife that he wanted to give baseball a shot but if it didn't work out he would be happy to be a strawberry farmer. He had a decent but checkered career until he was 37, then nobody wanted him, then he caught on with Minnesota, and from that point on he has pitched some of the best baseball of his life.

He has never been a fan favorite until now, at age 41, when he's the toast of Detroit. He's been so good with the Motown crowd behind him, Leyland set him up to pitch twice at home during this World Series. He has never been a big-game pitcher, and then Sunday--with the Tigers' hopes drifting--he threw a game for the ages. Afterward, on the field, the tough guy seemed to have tears in his eyes. He seemed to choke up as he spoke. Maybe he does have a little Kenny in him after all.