Kenesaw Mountain Landis - Aug. 3, 1921:
"Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that entertains proposals or promises to throw a game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball."
Bud Selig - Dec. 13, 2007:
Bud Selig - Dec. 13, 2007:
“So long as there may be potential cheaters, we will always have to monitor our programs and constantly update them to catch those who think they can get away with breaking Baseball's rules. In the name of integrity, that's exactly what I intend to do."
Two quotes about cheating in baseball.
Two very different circumstances.
Which is worse? Players losing games purposely with the promise of a hefty paycheck at the end of the day or players taking drugs that are designed to build muscle faster, aid in injury rehabilitation, which in the end helps their team win ballgames?
I’m a baseball traditionalist as much as any stogey-chomping 80-year-old at Yankee games – I still despise Interleague play (mostly because the Dodgers have lost 13 of their last 20 to the Angels), but the wild card is growing on me – so I get that the hallowed numbers of baseball are sullied by this steroid era. But were the pitching numbers tainted when the mound was a few inches higher in the late 1960s? There are a handful of spitball pitchers in the hall of fame, should they have asterisks next to their names? Gaylord Perry (yeah, that’s his real name – go ahead, giggle, I do the same thing when his name is mentioned) has admitted to cheating and he’s in the hall. He used to put everything on the ball to make his pitches dance - vaseline, spit, and scuff it. If he didn’t think he’d get chucked from a game, I’m sure he’d doctor the ball with his own poo to get a batter to swing and miss.
So, if 80-or-so players in the late 90s and early 2000s felt they needed an edge and spiked up before game time to help them play better, who am I to say that’s wrong? Hell, the owners knew what they were doing, the fans knew what they were doing. And you could damn well bet the sportswriters knew what the players were doing. But at least they weren’t messing with my trust that every game is being played on the up and up.
Two quotes about cheating in baseball.
Two very different circumstances.
Which is worse? Players losing games purposely with the promise of a hefty paycheck at the end of the day or players taking drugs that are designed to build muscle faster, aid in injury rehabilitation, which in the end helps their team win ballgames?
I’m a baseball traditionalist as much as any stogey-chomping 80-year-old at Yankee games – I still despise Interleague play (mostly because the Dodgers have lost 13 of their last 20 to the Angels), but the wild card is growing on me – so I get that the hallowed numbers of baseball are sullied by this steroid era. But were the pitching numbers tainted when the mound was a few inches higher in the late 1960s? There are a handful of spitball pitchers in the hall of fame, should they have asterisks next to their names? Gaylord Perry (yeah, that’s his real name – go ahead, giggle, I do the same thing when his name is mentioned) has admitted to cheating and he’s in the hall. He used to put everything on the ball to make his pitches dance - vaseline, spit, and scuff it. If he didn’t think he’d get chucked from a game, I’m sure he’d doctor the ball with his own poo to get a batter to swing and miss.
So, if 80-or-so players in the late 90s and early 2000s felt they needed an edge and spiked up before game time to help them play better, who am I to say that’s wrong? Hell, the owners knew what they were doing, the fans knew what they were doing. And you could damn well bet the sportswriters knew what the players were doing. But at least they weren’t messing with my trust that every game is being played on the up and up.
Man, baseball used to be so much easier when we were kids, wasn’t it?
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1 comment:
That's a good point about the pitchers. I had never really thought about it that way.
And no matter what I find it way more disturbing and an affront to the "integrity of the game" that refs were fixing basketball games than the fact that MLB players were juicing.
But I am still shocked at how stupid some of the MLB players were going about getting their drugs. I mean writing personal checks to the lab that manufactures it. What did they do write "Steroids" in the memo line?
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