Never thought of that. Whenever I retrieve the CB for a player that is in a pocket due to my mistake. I generally wipe the ball off for them on my shirt. Always thought of it as a polite gesture to want clean the ball after potentially picking something up from the bottom of the pocket.I have always rubbed the cue ball on the rail to remove chalk, it seems like an opponent could take offense if I used a towel, shirt, pants pocket, etc without asking first.
Why would someone take offense to an opponent cleaning the ball...? ...if it wasn't in play already