Webster's defines integrity thusly: "A firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values." So then, what is the integrity of baseball? If we assume that a moral code develops within a given group based on the standards of that particular community, we can define the integrity of that group based upon its history. And baseball's history tells us a lot about exactly how outraged we should be by these "cheaters."
Just Win, Baby
Ty Cobb was elected into the Hall of Fame by one of the largest margins ever recorded, eclipsing even Babe Ruth in that category. This from a man who sharpened his spikes so that when he slid into second, he could slide with his spikes high and stab the person covering the base. Needless to say, his stolen base records stood for a long time. Was this against the rules? It was just as much against the rules as performance enhancing drugs (PED) were before 2004. He also was a known gambler, called before the Commissioner for "fixing games," who was let off because he threatened to reveal others involved and the depth of corruption. In other words, he had his own list, and rather than let him reveal them slowly in an early precedent to today's scandals, baseball ignored it! Sound familiar? (As a sidenote, he also was one of the most infamous racists in baseball, beat up and stabbed a black porter in a hotel, refused to go to Cuba because he wouldn't play against "darkies," and fought an umpire under the stands after an argument about strikes. The fight had to be broken up after Cobb began strangling the umpire in an attempt to kill him.) But Cobb represents the "good old days," so let's just ignore all of that.
The Miracle at Coogan's Bluff
The year is 1951. The date: August 11th. The New York Giants trail the Dodgers by 13 1/2 games in the race for the pennant, when suddenly, they start to win. The late summer and early fall become one of the most electrifying pennant races in baseball history, as the Giants win 37 of their last 44 to force a playoff with the Dodgers. The teams split the first two games, so it came down to one game for all the marbles. The Dodgers led 4-1 going into the bottom of the ninth, when Alvin Dark singled, Mueller singled, Lockman doubled, and then Bobby Thomson knocked a liner over the left field wall for "the shot heard round the world." Amazing, real baseball. The kind of thing you look back on and say, "THAT is what it should be about. A team coming together to win it all." There's just one problem: The Giants were cheating.
Starting in July of that year,Herman Franks would sit in Durocher's office in centerfield with a telescope, and steal the signs of the opposing catcher, use a buzzer to signal the pitch to the bullpen, where players would signal the batter. After this practice started, Thomson's average went up by 100 points! Technically, sign stealing is not illegal; however, the use of technology to do so is, and was at the time. Of course, technically, PEDs were not illegal in 2003. But by cheating, we were given one of the most famous plays in baseball. Just brush the sign-stealing under the rug. Ignore it.
Baseball Goes Green
When Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner returned from WWII to the Pirates, he discovered that the trainer had, readily available, the same "greenies" used by GIs in the war to get an extra burst of energy. Often, before the second game of a double-header, trainers would hand out greenies to the players to give them the energy to perform. "All the trainers in all the ballparks had them," Kiner said. This was in the 1940s! All the way through the seventies, many teams would have two coffee pots in the locker room, with one labelled "hot," meaning that it had amphetamines dissolved in it for an extra kick. Realistically speaking, if it is true that every locker room had this, and every trainer had a "candy bowl" of greenies available, how can we look back on the records of Dimaggio, Williams, Mays, Maz, Yaz, and everyone else from that era without the same lingering question marks? How can we look at Roger Maris, suddenly out of nowhere hitting better than the Mick, without questioning it? If we are going to question PEDs of all types, the questioning has to go all the way back. So why doesn't it? Because, when it came to the use of amphetamines, baseball and all of its fans decided to ignore it.
Blind? Or Just Didn't Care?
1998. Baseball had come out of a season-ending strike, and fans had moved on to other things, other sports. Attendance and TV ratings were down. There was talk that even hockey was going to pass baseball in fan interest, moving into the "Big Three" of American sports. But then Mark Mcgwire starting hitting home runs. In May, Sammy Sosa caught fire, hitting 20 home runs in one month, and the race was on. It became a huge spectacle for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that one was a Cub, the other a Cardinal. So when someone saw the Andro in Mcgwire's locker, it was a big deal, right? No. Because we were all just enjoying the race so much, and we told ourselves, "hey, it's not against the rules." Sosa was later caught with a corked bat. We didn't try to change the records from that year. No, we were so happy to have good baseball stories, we all, baseball and its fans, chose to ignore it.
2003 and Beyond
In 2003, MLB started a program of random, anonymous drug testing, an agreement reached with the MLBPA to examine if a stricter drug policy were needed. The players were informed that it would be anonymous. 104 players tested positive for some form of PED, so baseball initiated a formal policy. Of course, MLB didn't keep the tests anonymous, as they promised (THAT'S integrity), so now we are subjected to the slow torture of these revelations. But let's face the facts: We don't really care. We are TOTALLY willing to ignore it, just as we have everything else, including the above examples, Gaylord Perry's spitballs, Joe Niekro's emery board, and many other examples from the "code of moral ... values" established within the sport.
After all, as a wise man once said, "Your standards are defined by what you choose to ignore."
No comments:
Post a Comment