• Does Jake Throw A Spitter? See, to me... the spitter is like a lost dark art. It's against the rules to be sure, but if it were really such a terrible thing, they wouldn't have grandfathered in all of the guys who openly threw spitters after the pitch was banned. And even now, it lives on in the hearts of slightly evil pitchers. Jake Peavy harnessing the unholy powers of hell to do the holy work of defeating the Dodgers. He's like Ghostrider or Hellblazer or Spawn or something. Carry on, young Jake! Work your dastardly magic! [Gaslamp Ball]

• Is He Cheating?. Is he cheating? Is it just a coincidence that the 3 fingers that grip the ball have a mysterious substance on them? Or does Jake Peavy wipe with his pitching hand? YOU decide. I clipped video of the final out of the game and subsequent poopy-finger shot. It seems Peavy still has an awful lot of movement on his last pitch. [Bugs and Cranks]

• Padres' Peavy Denies Using Pine Tar On Hand. "It's just dirt," said Peavy as he looked at copies of the pictures. "I pick up dirt. I mean, come on. I mean, seriously. That's funny to me, seriously." He later added, "If anybody wants to check me for anything I'm doing at any time, they're more than welcome to. I promise you that." [Los Angeles Times]

Sunday's games:

• Royals' Road Rules. Hear ye, the Royals are 4-2! Brett Tomko pitched five shutout innings and Alex Gordon had a two-run single as KC beat Minnesota 3-1 to finish their road trip 4-2. The Royals won only three road trips all of last season.

• Yankees Celebrate Diversity. Chien-Ming Wang threw a four-hitter through six innings, Hideki Matsui had a two-run homer and Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera closed out the win as the Yankees prevailed over the Formerly-Known-As-Devil Rays, 2-0.

• John Smoltz Is Back, Kids! John Smoltz returned from a back injury and went five scoreless innings, with Mark Teixeira getting a two-run homer, as the Braves beat Johan Santana and the Mets 3-1. Although only 3-3, Atlanta has scored 40 runs over its first six games.

• Your Giants Update. Reliever Keiichi Yabu is out with blurry vision and corneal abrasions after the rubber tube he was using to do arm exercises became unhooked from his locker and snapped back, hitting him in the face. Outfielder Randy Winn is also out with a bruised right ankle, which he injured with his bat on a backswing. Meanwhile, the team has discontinued recorded music between innings and will instead use a laugh track. Oh, on Sunday it was Brewers 7, Giants 0. Today is Opening Day at AT&T Park!

• Your Dodgers Update. Brad Penny had a not-so-great first inning on Saturday against the Padres (giving up four runs on six hits), and Rockin' The Ravine thinks it knows why: "Taking another look at Dodgers.com, apparently Penny went to warm up in the bullpen a half-hour before the game started, but there wasn't a catcher there. So he tried to get an usher and then a member of the grounds crew to warm him up, but they both declined. He finally found a Dodgers fan in the stands who played catch with him from the fifth row. Are you kidding me!? Is this little league?" [Rockin' The Ravine]

In all fairness, Klondike bars are a messy ordeal. But after Kenny Rogers' mysterious shmootz in the 2006 postseason which magically enabled him to be the only Tigers pitcher to effectively throw the ball to any base, one has to wonder if Peavy's getting performance-enhancing stains from the same dealer. Then again, it's April.

If you need a closer look:

I'm going with turkey gravy. It's just too delicious to not be the alibi.

Because now sports reporters at college newspapers take drunk athlete photos and post them to their blogs.

The scene: The DI Sports Bar Crawl is underway at Joe's Brewery and things are just starting to get exciting on the poles. Then, a phone call was received from a friend of a friend of DI on-air reporter, Jon Stiffler in fact, who said Jake Peavy, Roy Oswalt and Brad Penny — three of the National League's most dominant pitchers (Peavy, my favorite player/hero being the 2007 NL Cy Young winner) — were at KAM's fraternizing with the UI student body.

We don't see anything wrong with this, of course — Peavy and company don't look particularly drunk (though they can find the ladies!), and it's mostly a breathless Holy Crap Look Who's At Kam's! — but it does seem to make some sort of shift, somehow, we're not sure how.

Oh, and we love the first sentence of the piece: "The DI Sports Bar Crawl is underway at Joe's Brewery and things are just starting to get exciting on the poles." Christ. College. Nothing like it.

I Met Jake Peavy At Kam's [Daily Illini Blogs]

Nothing wrong with this picture — save for the shirt, of course — but we really were due for one of these, lest we forget our mission to infect the sports world with a nasty case of the Voyeurs.

By the way, we think this would be cooler if Peavy were wearing the Padres camouflage uniforms.

Peavy Hits The Bottle [HotFoot]