There is an old adage that “Cheaters never prosper”. While that is an excellent tool for teaching children honesty and integrity those of us who’ve grown to adulthood have discovered that this proverb rarely holds true.
No parent with a conscience would ever teach their child “It’s only cheating if you get caught” but this attitude seems more prevalent in society and most especially in sports.
Why?
Well nobody likes to lose and “You can’t win them all”. So there are those that will toss integrity aside to obtain whatever advantage is possible to succeed. Leaving everybody else feeling, well, cheated.
Dictionary.com defines cheater as a person or thing that cheats. Okay so what does it mean to cheat? The website says to cheat is to deceive by trickery; swindle, or to deprive by trickery; defraud or to mislead; fool. By that definition Tom Glavine’s change up has cheated a lot of batters. Reading down a little further you find a baseball definition for cheat; to position oneself closer to a certain area than is normal or expected as in the shortstop cheated toward second base. Nothing wrong with that kind of cheating, right? The classic definition of cheat is to act dishonestly, or to violate rules deliberately, as in a game.
This act of cheating evokes strong emotions from the cheated and often leads to bitterness, hostility and resentment.
Barry Bonds returned to action last night sitting on 746 career home runs, just nine shy of the great Hank Aaron. Yesterday Aaron was in Milwaukee at a news conference held on the spot where his final home run landed.
When asked about the Giants slugger Aaron said, “I don’t have any thoughts on Barry. I don’t even know how to spell his name.”
Aaron, who by all accounts is a class act, is not simply pouting because his reign as baseball’s Home Run King is coming to an end. His biting response comes from the allegations swirling around Bonds and baseball.
The sport has a problem with performance enhancing drugs. Recently due to public and political pressure they have taken steps to clean up their game. This is a perfect example of “It’s only cheating if you get caught”.
Baseball has a storied and checkered past. It is not devoid of controversy or cheating. Black marks dot its history. The integrity of the sport and its participants has been called into question time and time again.
After the strike 1994 many fans said they would never come back. Just a year later Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s 56 year old record softening the hearts of some embittered baseball fans. Three years after that McGuire and Sosa chased down Maris with the whole nation watching and baseball was back. We continue to come back because we love the game. After all, this is still a game.
It’s understandable that Hank Aaron is upset. He worked hard and did things the right way under tremendous pressure that extended far beyond baseball. Now his accomplishments are about to be surpassed by a suspected cheater. He has earned the right to feel that way.
It is natural for human beings to seek for a sense of justice. Often though, we are left wanting. Some seek to cope with this by trusting in a divine justice that awaits the unjust in the next life, others rely on karma to even things out and some try to bring about some form of justice on their own.
Baseball writers have weighed in loud and clear. They don’t want Bonds or any other player who may have cheated to prosper. Mark McGuire was denied in his first bid for the hall of fame. It is unclear but seems likely that Barry Bonds will share his fate.
The reaction of baseball fans has been emphatic, almost taking it personally. It’s as if they collectively had gotten a tattoo that says “755” with Home Run King above and Aaron underneath and Bonds is rendering it both regrettable and obsolete (side note: All tattoos are eventually regrettable and obsolete, but I digress). They’ve booed Bonds, made signs, petitioned the league to ban Barry and even thrown objects in protest of his march through the record books. Outside of the latter, they are within their rights as fans to do so.
Still they are all missing something. Baseball is a game. Enjoy it.
These players were just doing what they could get away with. Like small children testing the limits of their parents. Baseball let its children run amuck until they became a menace to society and society spoke up. So essentially Baseball has checked its problem child into rehab. There is plenty of blame to go around but none of that can change what’s happened. All that can be done now is work towards a brighter future.
Is the use of performance enhancing drugs cheating? Absolutely and it’s a shame. Does suspicion diminish the accomplishments of the last decade or so? Probably. Does it diminish baseball? It shouldn’t.
Why does it matter whose No. 1 in the record books? How does that affect a baseball fan that comes to see his team play or to watch his favorite player? It doesn’t.
Enjoy a swinging third strike, applaud a mammoth home run, revel in a 3-6-4 double play or debate the validity of the DH. That’s baseball; 755 is just a number.