It’s
a question that’s been asked and commented on by everyone from Jayson Stark to
Keith Olbermann to Matt Coyne. Why the love for Manny, who just got nailed for
cheating? The two-part answer is ultimately pretty simple. First, cheating in
baseball is an old and honored tradition, at least, honored by the fans of those
doing the cheating. Second, it’s apparently a lot worse to get caught (or to
admit to wrong-doing) after the fact (and after you’re out of the game) than
it is to get caught while you’re still playing. If you get nailed in the act,
and accept some form of punishment, you can still come back to a heroes’
welcome by your home town fans, especially if there’s a good chance you can
lead your team to the World Series.
The
case for the first part goes all the way back to the very roots of the game, to
when baseball was first organized on a large scale into clubs, in the 1860s.
Although there was no reserve clause or contracts at that time – there
weren’t even all-professional teams until 1869 – you weren’t supposed to
jump from team-to-team for whatever reason (although the reason was usually that
you were getting paid under the table in some fashion.) It was called
“revolving” and it was banned by the National Association of Base Ball
Players. Didn’t matter, players did it all the time, and since they obviously
found places to play when they jumped their original teams, the clubs themselves
were all for it… as long as revolving involved a player revolving to
your team, as opposed to revolving from your team. The practice was, in
fact, quite common, especially after Jim Creighton became the first paid player,
leaving Star of Brooklyn for Excelsior of Brooklyn, and Al Reach became the
first player to change cities (from Brooklyn to Philadelphia) in pursuit of $$$.
Yes, Reach (and the Athletic Club) was cheating under the NABBP rules, and he
did indeed prosper, becoming a great star and a sporting goods mogul in his
new city
. (The only fashion in which Reach didn’t succeed was that he’s never been
voted into the Hall of Fame, though it’s unlikely that his revolving has been
the cause of that snub.)
There were plenty of other situations wherein the rules were bent in the 19th
Century. King Kelly, perhaps the most beloved player of the 1800s, was famous
for his ability to get around the rules by such means as going from first to
third without bothering to stop off at second on the way (the game’s single
umpire couldn’t follow the ball and the runners at the same time, not without
eyes in the back of his head). Then there was perhaps the most famous Kelly
anecdote – about the time he was on the bench and a pop foul struck by an
opposing batter came his way. Seeing that his teammates couldn’t make the
catch, Kelly leaped off the bench and shouted something like, “Kelly now
catching” and snagged the ball for an out. While there’s no telling if this
really happened (the story is told both with Kelly playing for
Chicago
and
Boston
) or not, it was true that the rules at that time did not specify that
substitutions could not be made while the game was in progress.
And
King Kelly wasn’t the only 19th Century player to skirt the rules.
For that matter, the most beloved baseball figure in the first half of the 20th
Century, Connie Mack, wasn’t above a little “gamesmanship” when he was a
catcher in the 19th Century. Little tricks like tipping the bat, or
mimicking the sound of a foul tip when the rules stated that any caught foul tip
was an out.
Cheating
(or evading) took other forms in the 19th Century, including the fine
old tradition of sign stealing. Just to prove that high tech was in use more
than 100 years ago, the Phillies got nailed for sign stealing in a game against
the Reds in 1900. A Cincy infielder caught his spikes on what he thought was a
vine, except that it turned out to be an electrical wire, running from the
center field clubhouse in the future Baker Bowl to the third base coaches box.
At one end of the wire was sub catcher Morgan Murphy and a telescope, at the
other, a metal plate in the coaches box, for the coach to pick up electrical
impulses through his spikes, impulses that signaled the coming pitch. Although
his team wasn’t directly involved that day, Brooklyn Superbas manager Ned
Hanlon was highly agitated by this discovery, calling Phillies manager Bill
Shettsline a crook. In conjunction with Phillies co-owner John Rogers (the other
co-owner was none other than Al Reach) commenting that this maneuver was fair
and legitimate, Hanlon’s diatribe only proves the basic truth of cheating –
it’s fine, as long as you’re the one doing it. Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles
of the 1890s were infamous for such tricks as hiding extra baseballs in the long
grass of the outfield and holding a runner’s belt when he tried to tag up on a
fly ball (that was John McGraw’s specialty.)
And
that was just in the 19th Century. The 20th Century was
the heyday of altered bats and balls. The list of players known to have in some
fashion altered their bats by such means as plugs, cork, driving nails into the
bats, and gluing several pieces of wood together, is a long one, and includes
Babe Ruth, George Sisler, Norm Cash and many less talented hitters. And, who
knows how many pitchers got away with altering baseballs after the ban on such
was promulgated in the 1920 season. Preacher Roe, Whitey Ford, Lou Burdette,
Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton… those are just some of the better known miscreants.
Yes,
cheating has been around a long time, and note that, outside of Morgan Murphy,
all of the parties previously mentioned herein most definitely prospered.
What’s really interesting though is the public reaction to cheating. Face it,
over the long course of baseball history, the public only gets upset about
cheating if it’s being done against their team. It’s the baseball writers
who more typically get on a high horse on the subject, since many baseball
writers, like many sportswriters, have an inflated sense of their own
importance. Starting with the Brooklyn
Eagle’s Henry Chadwick, and going all the way through the New
York Herald’s Dan Daniel (David Halberstam said he considered
himself the official oracle of the sport – as did Chadwick, it might be
noted), the New York Daily News’ Dick
Young, the Boston Globe’s
Peter Gammons (who has since gone electronic on ESPN) and the Philadelphia
Daily News’ Bill Conlin (who has been known to start out columns
with the wishful thought… “When I’m King of the World”) many baseball
writers have, consciously or otherwise, considered themselves bigger than the
game, or at least bigger than the subjects they are writing about.
Pontificators, if you will. Judges of morality.
Guys,
I hate to tell you this, but the general public pretty much doesn’t give a
damn. They still love Barry Bonds in
San Francisco
, just like they love Manny in LA. Hitting .370 over the course of a half-season
will do that. And, both of these guys apparently broke the rules in a most
egregious fashion. Now, Bonds may have gotten some serious booing outside of the
Bay Area in his last couple of years, and Manny may well hear the same outside
LA for the rest of his career (imagine what he might hear in Boston this fall in
a highly likely Dodger/Red Sox World Series, especially after his behavior in
Beantown last year), but Gaylord Perry was just as popular with his hometown
fans after the release of “Me and the Spitter” as he was beforehand.
However,
there are a couple of things you don’t want to do… don’t offer up a
confession for money after your playing days (Roe was widely blasted for the
magazine article that revealed his use of the spitter after he retired), and
don’t get caught lying, or seeming to lie. This latter faux pas may well keep
McGwire and Palmeiro out of the Hall of Fame for a very long time, despite the
fact that there is no physical proof that they cheated (recall that andro was
legal when McGwire was taking it.)
Now,
maybe that’s not right, and maybe that’s not fair (as Scar observed in
“The Lion King,” life’s not fair). But it’s a fact. And raging against
public indifference isn’t going to do any good, and isn’t going to change
anything. There is, in fact, only one thing to do… get over it. Move on. Along
these same lines, what Sammy Sosa did in 2003 is over and done with. He’s not
playing anymore, and he’s not going to play anymore, anymore than McGwire or
Palmeiro are. Get over it. It’s all part of baseball history now, and
there’s no way you can change it, either by railing against these miscreants
or by not voting any of them into the Hall of Fame. No matter how much you may
dislike Bonds or Roger Clemens, et al, what are you going to do, leave an entire
generation of players out of the Hall? Everyone who played the bulk of their
careers between say, 1993 and 2005, just because they might have used PEDs? That
would be absurd. As equally absurd as kicking King Kelly, Connie Mack, John
McGraw, Babe Ruth, George Sisler, Whitey Ford, Gaylord Perry, Don Sutton, etc.,
etc., out of the Hall.
Maybe
everybody didn’t do it (whether “it” is altering the ball or the bat, PEDs,
or evading the rules in some other fashion), but it appears as if enough hitters
and pitchers did PEDs that the playing field was fairly level, at least in the
sense that the best players were still the best players. Did the juice make any
mediocre players superstars? Not bloody likely, anymore than corking his bat
made Billy Hatcher a star. PED’s may have put Barry Bonds in an artificial
stratosphere, and they may have kept players like Pablo Ozuna in the majors a
year or two longer, but the effects are ultimately all relative and, in the end,
the fans, the people who pay the freight, really don’t care. The reaction to
Manny’s return is just the latest manifestation of that truth. The more vocal
fans (like the ones who call in to talk radio) may sound like they’re really
ticked off, but, bottom line is, it’s not that big of a deal. Sure, go ahead
and do your best to police the sport, whether it’s suspending Nelson Potter
for spitballing or suspending juicers, (better for a year than 50 games, but not
for false positives), but, other than that, get over it and move one. It’s
part of a culture in baseball (and all sports, for that matter) that’s been
going on for a long time.