On Tuesday night in Pittsburgh, Justin Steele found himself in unfamiliar territory.

As the game moved to the bottom of the 3rd inning, the Cubs were trailing 2-0.

As Steele went out to warm up, the umpires checked his hands – part of the standard procedure nowadays – but after a discussion, he was sent back to the Cubs dugout…

…only to return and finish the inning and continue on with his outing. In fact, Steele ended up tossing 5 innings Tuesday night, enough to earn his 5th win of the season as the Cubs offense rallied in a big way.

So what went down during that discussion with the umpires?

“They thought he had rosin on his non-pitching hand, which you’re not allowed to have rosin on your non-pitching hand,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell told reporters Tuesday night. “So they just asked him to take it off. He took it off – no big deal.”

[Dansby Swanson had a special birthday present for his mom during the Cubs’ win Tuesday night]

The Cubs have seen what happens firsthand when things go the other way. During a June game at Wrigley Field, Mets closer Edwin Díaz was ejected after a foreign substance was found on his hand and he was ultimately suspended for 10 games.

It was a tense few minutes there for Steele, even though rosin is not an illegal substance and is provided for MLB pitchers on the mound each game.

“Yeah, you could probably see me shaking,” he told reporters in Pittsburgh. “I was scared. They were saying you can’t have rosin on your non-throwing arm. I really didn’t know that, so they told me to go wipe it off of my non-throwing arm.

“I was definitely scared. I was like, ‘I’m not really doing anything wrong here.’ I was scared to death, honestly.”

It was a very warm, muggy night in Pittsburgh and Steele said he was using rosin often throughout the evening.

When the umpires asked him to wipe it off, he went to the dugout and got a towel from Cubs pitching coach Tommy Hottovy to wipe down his right arm. The umpires checked him every inning after that point and there were no subsequent issues.

“I respect the umpires for wanting to protect the integrity of the game and everything,” Steele said. “I respect that.”