Peralta's Pine Tar and Poor Parenting

[DOUGHBOYS]

Have you followed the whole Peralta/Maddon/Johnson/pine tar thing?
I have and it is highly amusing in many ways.
First, the set up...
Davey Johnson knew that Peralta was a 'pine tar thrower' and had the umpires check out Peralta's glove before throwing a pitch. The umpires checked and Peralta was bounced.
Peralta has been getting away with this for a long time. An analogy would be that he is the boy that carries a pocket knife to school each day. His friends knows he does it, some teachers too, but nobody sees the harm and look the other way in reporting the kid.
But, now that somebody has turned in the kid, the parents and administration have to get involved.
Peralta's parent (Joe Maddon) says that Johnson is bush for turning in Peralta. That he had the 'inside information' from Peralta pitching for the Nationals in the past and that it was 'bush' and cowardly for him to turn him in.
Maddon also thought it unfair that Peralta be singled out when other pitchers are doing the same thing.
And, for all of his bad parenting of defending Peralta without admitting he did anything wrong, he did the same thing as Johnson, and had a lesser Nationals pitcher checked for substances an inning later.

Maddon knows that his boy did the wrong thing. The right thing by his team, the wrong thing in getting caught doing the right thing by his team. Like most modern parents, he is minimizing what Peralta did, even using the 'Well the other boys do it too!' standard. And trying to deflect blame on his boy by saying how chickenshit it was for Johnson to report him in the first place.
Maddon is duty bound to defend his boy. It's part of the job. At the same time, it doesn't put him in the best of lights.

Amusingly, with Peralta banished, an even better pitcher in Jake McGee enters the game. Peralta is the set-up guy out of habit for Maddon. McGee has been the better pitcher. And not surprisingly, McGee set the Nats down in order. So the effects of the ejection may have helped the Rays win the game.

In the aftermath, Johnson has let go of the incident. Not so with Maddon who feels obligated to protect his boy.
Saying a little more each time when questioned about the incident.
Today, his boy got suspended from school for eight days. This too, may benefit the Rays. The Rays could find out that McGee is more suited for set-up and end of the game chores, giving them a great one, two, three punch when Kyle Farnsworth returns.
What about Peralta?
He's accustomed to moving from team to team and will probably be on a different one next year. He'll land on his feet. He doesn't even have enough celeb to be labeled, 'the pine tar guy'.
After his appeal ends, he'll while away the time, whittling with his knife.