A Tarnished Record

[ksabet]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

It's easy to be nostalgic and make assumptions about prior generations of ballplayers. Human nature doesn't change over time; if steroids had been available from 1900-1980 I think the same percentage of players would have been users. The 50s-60s generation used greenies because that was what was available, for example.

I agree with this totally. We adapted to the Wild Card when purists went nuts. We adapted to the 162 game season. They used to play best of 9 in the world series. Spitballs were commonplace. Spiking was normalcy.

I dont think the juicers are going anywhere. They will keep coming up with ways to go undetected and break more and more records.

I still love the game, the history and the cards. I stopped worrying a while ago about the cheaters and just trained my mind to accept that the majority of the league cheats in some way.

Peter was correct. It's naive to think that Cobb, Ruth, Wagner etc would not have used an added edge if it was provided to them.

Hal Chase and the Black Sox got caught, but how many others went unpunished like A-Rod?

[HRBAKER]

So it's ok to cheat bc everyone would have if they could have?

Or...

I should be cautious about holding Gehrig in higher esteem than ARod bc I should assume that had he had the same opportunity to cheat/self-enhance he would of?

[ksabet]

Originally Posted by HRBAKER

So it's ok to cheat bc everyone would have if they could have?

Or...

I should be cautious about holding Gehrig in higher esteem than ARod bc I should assume that had he had the same opportunity to cheat/self-enhance he would of?

I didn't say it was OK. I just said it is a fact and it's not going away. I also never said any specific player would have cheated but that there was rampant cheating going on and one is being naive if they think no early players would have juiced if they had the opportunity.

We seem to deify the pre-war players but history is chocked full of guys that cheated from all eras.