![]() ![]() ![]() Caruso had been competing in strongman events since 2006. in 2009.īy day, Caruso, a former Division I lacrosse player at UMBC, was pursuing a PhD in cell and molecular biology at North Dakota State University. The sticky substance tearing baseball apart, both literally and figuratively, was created in a materials characterization and analysis lab in Fargo, N.D. “I had no idea it was popular in baseball.” When I ask Caruso what he thinks about his tacky - that’s the term among strongmen and strongwomen - becoming the talk of baseball, he answers cautiously. This is the man who invented Spider Tack.Īnd he is confused about why I’m calling. At 40, he’s still so muscular he looks like he could crush a baseball with his hands. He is a retired strongman, once one of the strongest men in America. The woman who answers the phone patches me through to the lab’s president and CEO, Mike Caruso. The parent company, Spider Strength LLC, has no office.Ī little amateur sleuthing leads to a LinkedIn profile, then another, then an address, then a phone number, and then I’m cold-calling a pharmaceuticals lab on the outskirts of Denver. Their website is bare-bones, their social media accounts dormant. ![]() ![]() It’s easier to get your hands on the stuff - $35.99 plus shipping for a nine-ounce container on Amazon - than it is to get ahold of the people behind it. I already had the short answer, but it took falling through an internet mineshaft to learn more about Spider Tack. “What was it even created for?” a third pitcher asked. (Even Travis Sawchik, a baseball writer for theScore throwing 59 mph fastballs, gained 400 rpm with Spider Tack.) When The Athletic’s Eno Sarris had a former major league pitcher test grip substances this spring, the spin rate jumped more than 500 rpm - or roughly 25 percent - after switching from a sunscreen-and-rosin mix to Spider Tack. “Spider Tack is there to have on your glove for when you need that slider or heater to really rip,” the pitcher said. It’s almost too sticky - it takes WD-40 or baby oil to get it off your fingers. Pine tar, a sunscreen-and-rosin mixture and bubble-gum spit are more commonly used, another MLB pitcher said, but Spider Tack is easy to hide and wickedly effective. Until a crackdown comes, Spider Tack is still one smear on the artist’s palette that is a pitcher’s glove. Spider Tack represents the logical extreme in an arms race for better spin and nastier movement that has gone, to this point, unchecked by the league. The subtext to all of this is that there’s the type of cheating the league has largely ignored for years, and then there’s cheating. Four minor league pitchers were suspended last week for using grip substances, just days before The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the commissioner’s office had met with MLB owners to discuss the severity of the foreign-substances issue and how to police it. ” Twins slugger Josh Donaldson is threatening to expose pitchers. Cardinals manager Mike Shildt called it “baseball’s dirty little secret. Sticky stuff is at the center of the baseball conversation. ![]()
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