Was PUD GALVIN The First Doper?

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Do people really object to the cheating, or is the performance enhancing? Nobody is bitching about Gaylord being in the Hall, or Whitey Ford who scuffed baseballs constantly, and so on and so on. And greenies, even if not prohibited by baseball rules, were prescription drugs and surely these guys did not have prescriptions, so taking them was illegal.

It's neither. Galvin possibly taking some miracle BS is factually not cheating as there was no rule against this and is also factually not performance enhancing; it's an illogical narrative that just suits what people want to find and has been latched onto the last decade because of this. There's nothing to object to if either of those options were the cause of the objection. Both claims are demonstrably false.

Personally I would draw a consistent line at actual cheating, i.e. breaking the actual rules of baseball, requiring specific evidence. Galvin, Ruth, and the fabrication about Aaron did not break the rules. Neither did McGwire's andro at the time he used it. This just seems like the basic common sense, and thus unpopular as it doesn't suit either narrative (as it does not punish the old timers that factually did not cheat but also excuses some of the steroid generation that also did not violate the rules), line. For the cheating to result in severe punishment like a ban or keeping out of the Hall, the cheating should be severe and endemic. I would thus not ban Whitey Ford from the hall for his late career spitters, but if caught he should have been suspended and slapped for it. Gaylord and those around him have made such disparate claims at different times about how much he actually cheated vs. created a mystique is something I'm not versed enough in to judge right now.