3.26.2005

give juice a chance

i'm no fan of cheating, steroids, drug use in general or agreeing with jayson stark all the time. and yet, in this case, i gotta agree with everything he wrote about mark mcguire, steroids and the national obsession with juiced players:

The primary argument against McGwire, obviously, is that he cheated. And at this point, it's almost impossible to assume he didn't.

But you don't even want to know how many players are in the Hall of Fame who cheated in some way, shape or form. With sandpaper or cork or Vaseline.

And baseball looked the other way and let them do it. Every one of them. So for me, McGwire -- like virtually all the members of this number-inflated generation -- probably gets lumped into the same category as Gaylord Perry.

Gaylord Perry was allowed to cheat, wrote a book about cheating, even made a video about cheating. And people not only looked the other way, but thought it was hilarious. So all we could do, when he appeared on our ballot, was vote on what he did on the field -- which was have a Hall of Fame career.

leave barry, mark and sammy alone ... while i'm not proud of their behavior, and i think it greatly diminishes their accomplishments, it's very very hard to say "these kinds of cheaters over here are fine, but those over there are bad" -- both used means not in the rule book to gain an advantage in playing* the game.

to start making distinctions now seems to me to be awfully hypocritical, unless we clean out cooperstown at the same time.

and if we did that, we probably could fit what's left of the HOF in the back of my beetle.


* "playing" differentiates these cheaters from, say, pete rose. that kind of cheating has no place in any player considered for the HOF.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

no. you are wrong. the kind of physique altering cheating that allows players to vandalize baseball's greatest records is far worse than the kind of buffoonery in which gaylord perry engaged--and far more dangerous to the minds and bodies of young imitators. it is also far, far worse than what pete rose did, which wasn't cheating at all. your attempt to morally equalize these behaviors is both intellectually lazy and a disturbing sign that you are perpetuating the same kind of apathy and mindlessness that facilitates such behaviors. take a stand for first principles. this is baseball not professional wrestling.