This sounds about right. James made some good points about how time changes perceptions, but the ethical subjectivism and the weirdo futurism were ridiculous.

...Maybe there will be an asterisk, maybe not. And someday, I’m sure, sympathy will begin to curdle for these frauds. But they brought the lifeblood of America to its knees. They nearly ruined this country’s greatest institution, and jaded an entire generation of Americans.

In no way is this an overreaction.

Still, in a final display of twisted logic, James puts forth a belief that those who cheated, well, actually didn’t. “Is it cheating,” James writes, “if one violates a rule that nobody is enforcing, and which one may legitimately see as being widely ignored by those within the competition?”

I’ve read this sentence dozens of times, and I’m still confounded. Perhaps it is because I’m still in the thralls of academia, but I can’t help but picture a fellow student using this excuse with his professor: “But, sir, you left the classroom, and since there was no way you could see if I had snuck notes for the test or not, well, it’s not really cheating, is it?”

I didn't RTFA but this parallel makes no sense. In academia, sneaking into notes into an exam when explicitly prohibited is not widely ignored and strongly enforced. And unlike the era James is discussing, many colleges and universities have students sign a honor code explicitly prohibiting such activities.

I didn't read James' thoughts on PEDs. Did was he advocating that steroid use during the time in which it was against MLB rules, but was not enforced, was not cheating, or that you can't blame the players for using them?

If the latter, there's nothing wrong with the statement.

I don't think James is dense enough to argue that steroid use in the 1990's and 2000's was not cheating because "cheating" is an easily-defined and non-subjective term.

I think the author may be misinterpreting James' intent.

Still, in a final display of twisted logic, James puts forth a belief that those who cheated, well, actually didn’t. “Is it cheating,” James writes, “if one violates a rule that nobody is enforcing, and which one may legitimately see as being widely ignored by those within the competition?”

The problem is that James's premise is wrong: there was no rule to break.

I’ve read this sentence dozens of times, and I’m still confounded. Perhaps it is because I’m still in the thralls of academia, but I can’t help but picture a fellow student using this excuse with his professor: “But, sir, you left the classroom, and since there was no way you could see if I had snuck notes for the test or not, well, it’s not really cheating, is it?”

Actually, it is, because there are rules against cheating, and one who breaks those rules has violated those rules whether one is caught or not. But there were no rules against steroid usage.

If one wants to consider the silly Fay Vincent memo to be a "rule," then there was no enforcement of the rule, and no punishment for violating the rule. In this silly classroom analogy the student could consult his notes in front of the professor and it wouldn't matter because the professor would have no interest in enforcing the rule, and there would be no punishment for breaking the rule.

True, the rule-breaking may have been ashamedly unenforced.

You mean ashamedly unpunished.

Anyway, that's just like any other non rule.

I'm still wondering how much unspoken encouragement to juice there was from front offices, managers and coaches to players.

Sir, if you spent more time in a dugout with real men of honor and less time on the lowest level of your mother's domicile, you'd understand that the manly code of baseball is all the more rigorous for being unwritten....

The problem is that James's premise is wrong: there was no rule to break.

James actually goes onto to address this point later in his essay.

Page 4

And…was there really a rule against the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs? At best, it is a debatable point.
The Commissioner issued edicts banning the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. People who were raised on
the image of an all-powerful commissioner whose every word was law are thus inclined to believe that there was
a rule against it.

I'm still wondering how much unspoken encouragement to juice there was from front offices, managers and coaches to players.

I think that is the strongest point for why it wasn't cheating and it is the point that BJ should have stressed the most. It isn't cheating if your employer knows you are doing, fine with it, and even encouraging it. It isn't stealing if you take 100 dollars from the cash register now and then and the owner of the store knows you are doing it, telling you to do it, and even giving you a raise because you are doing it.

Rose maintains his sympathizers not because he came clean (á la Alex Rodriguez) but because he never bet against his team.

There were about a dozen reasons that Rose maintained his sympathizers. (I listed them recently in another thread.) The lack of evidence for him betting against his own team was just one of them.

In any event, Rose no longer has many sympathizers, ever since his belated confession made his sympathizers look like fools.

Meanwhile, Jackson was acquitted of his crimes, and managed to bat .375 in the eight-game World Series.

Oy.

But it would be foolhardy to say those who used performance-enhancing drugs did so with the pennant in mind. To them, numbers were the endgame, and juiced egotism reigned supreme.

What is the author's point here? That using steroids is worse than throwing the World Series for money?

and jaded an entire generation of Americans.

Phew. Never have I been more glad I'm Canadian. Narrowly missed being jaded and depressed like all you saps!

About the memo.

The memo was uneforceable with regards to the players and Vincent knew it and said as much in his interview with Maury Brown. What is interesting is that the memo was law for everybody else. Meaning the teams, the owners, the coaches, the trainers, hell even the ballboy had to obey this memo. Yet nobody in baseball, even after Bud Selig reissued the same memo ever got punished for violating this memo.

Meanwhile, Jackson was acquitted of his crimes, and managed to bat .375 in the eight-game World Series.

Yet he had a shvtty line in games known to be fixed in that series.

They nearly ruined this country’s greatest institution.

I guess the attendance levels, franchise values, and tv/radio, licensing, and merchandising revenue bear this out.

Or not.

Yet he had a shvtty line in games known to be fixed in that series.

DUH
Small sample size!

I think that is the strongest point for why it wasn't cheating and it is the point that BJ should have stressed the most. It isn't cheating if your employer knows you are doing, fine with it, and even encouraging it. It isn't stealing if you take 100 dollars from the cash register now and then and the owner of the store knows you are doing it, telling you to do it, and even giving you a raise because you are doing it.

McCoy:

I see what you're saying, but you're wrong. In each case, there is not simply the owner involved (in the strict sense of the owner of the Gap you work for, the baseball team you play for, or some other entity). The owners themselves are corrupt in these cases, and their corruption doesn't change the act from "stealing" to "non-stealing" or legitimate "income distribution." It's still stealing. Stealing is not defined just by, or primarily by, some harm to the owner, but by the act of illict taking; taking something that doesn't belong to you.

The corruption of baseball's owners - which actually hasn't been established in this case, but I'll grant - doesn't make convert the players' actions into legitimate ones.

The memo was uneforceable with regards to the players and Vincent knew it and said as much in his interview with Maury Brown.

If they had even tried to enforce the rule against any player, then perhaps there would be a colorable argument for this being a "rule."

Since they didn't?

Not so much.

meh.

another finger-wagging granny.

i'll bet with james before this guy. his bio says he's a student at rice, and believes his favorite teams, the blazers and the mariners, are always only 'one player away'. just the fact that he'd actually believe something like that says volumes about him.

Let me first say that the inflammatory headline really doesn't reflect the content of the article; it's pretty thoughtful (albeit very floridly overwritten.)

I agree that the college exam analogy is lousy. It's more like, if most of the class was cheating, and if everyone knew that the professors knew everyone was cheating, and that the professors didn't really care. But the author basically seems to admit as much, and back off the meat of the analogy (so I'm not sure why he made it to begin with...) when he says:

True, the rule-breaking may have been ashamedly unenforced. But that does not allow players the right to cross the line every time a head is turned. Even if 80 percent of the players were doing it, even if every member of your team was juicing, even if you knew you would never get caught: In no way does this fail to lower the ethical standard to which every player should be held.

I'm not sure I agree with this (I'm not sure I don't, either)... in any event, it's certainly a reasonable and coherent position, and it sure beats the hell out of comparing the issue to one person in an entire class breaking a very clear and extremely venerated rule, which really just was not the situation at all.

As for what exactly James says when discussing the "was there a 'rule' with any true moral validity?" argument [note that he has four other arguments ;-) -- see my summary here]... he does say that "at best, it is a debatable point" whether we could call this a "rule".

"Rules", in civilized society, have certain characteristics. They are agreed to by a process in which all of the interested parties participate.... It was never agreed to by the players, who clearly and absolutely have a right to participate in the process of changing any and all rules to which they are subject.

So yeah, he is making both points. The idea that we could consider this a "rule" is undermined both by the fact that so many disobeyed it and no attempt was made to even begin to enforce it, and by the fact that it didn't go through the "rulemaking" procedures.

The corruption of baseball's owners ... doesn't make convert the players' actions into legitimate ones.

Let's say a team drops manhole-size hints to a player it would be a good idea to turn on the power. The player then does what he's told, and next season puts up great numbers. The team wins more games, draws more fans, sells more ads for more money, etc.
When the team rewards the player with a larger contract, then his actions have been legitimized in one of the few ways that count.

Whether it was a) or b), it wasn't "cheating."

I don't know if you intend that as an "if...then" type argument, but it doesn't follow.

When the team rewards the player with a larger contract, then his actions have been legitimized in one of the few ways that count.

What actions? All his actions, or the consequences of actions unknown to his owner? And, again, even supposing that his owner knows, wink wink, that the power resulted from PEDs (though DMN and others will argue that is only a placebo affect, I assume), the moral failings of the owner don't change that from cheating into legitimate activity.

Well, I've criticized James on his article elsewhere, but as to this point, I have to say in reply to Michel's analogy: "not really". His analogy doesn’t really track what happened with steroids in MLB. Michel in his little analogy forgets one element: sure, his teacher left the room, but there's no suggestion he just didn't care if someone cheated in exactly that fashion or that he had not been enforcing the rule against cheating generally or in that particular way. Which is how defenders defend the steroid users?

What may be more appropriate in defending the drug users is this analogy: if you run a stop sign, you can tell the cop, or the judge, or your lawyer, that a lot of other people do and get away with it, so therefore you shouldn't be given a ticket. That’s true. It’s also true that it ain’t gonna do you a bit of good. Now, it may walk with your dad (your dad, not my dad), but as a matter of institutional principle set in expressed law, uh-uh. Law enforcement doesn’t have a duty to be perfect to justify itself. That ain't going to walk, though, at least not officially (you might be able to persuade the cop or the prosecutor or even the judge personally, maybe, to let you ride, but the rule isn’t invalidated because it is waived for you in a personal instance).

But there are conditions that could make a difference. Class circumstances make a big difference. You personally can’t be held to a duty that no one else is being held to. Laws can’t be written just for you or enforced just against you. However, he doesn't have to ticket everyone who's ever run that stop sign to legally justify his giving you, or me, a ticket.

But, if you have evidence that he was cherry-picking his stops, that's different. Or if a custom had been established that the authorities tolerated the infraction at that particular place (or for that particular category of crime across the jurisdictional board), well, maybe so. That he was there and letting everyone run through the intersection without stopping until you showed up (or a certain class of "you's"), then that's different. Or that for a long time cops knew of the law-breaking but did nothing while everyone of every class cruised through without stopping until one fine day they, without notice, had a change of mind and decided to begin enforcing the law at that place, in disregard of the custom established.

This is probably more what the defenders have in mind. When it is a statutory law, an expressed law, that's still going to be hard to dance around, though, but a jury would probably be sympathetic—of course, you don't get a jury trial for a traffic citation. Do you here? Who are the members?

I think it’s more like in the nature of a rule versus a folk belief. It’s about what we say we believe and what we do that shows what we actually believe. Of course they can both be pretty much the same. It’s only when they differ that you have a problem. Like here? There are beliefs, set in text, if not in stone, such as statutory laws, and there is what people actually do—folkways. This applies to many things (religion, sexual mores, business ethics, etc.). And, of course, it matters, too, whether it is a criminal issue. Or if it isn’t, if it’s like one (we can’t get away from analogizing).

So, which analogy applies? Which is it here? That's the point to decide before the discussion is ever going to be coherent.

When I proctor exams I will often leave the students for stretches of time without supervision. One time a student looked at me quizically and I said to the implied question that it was beneath me to watch them too closely to which a student then said it was beneath them to cheat.

It is irrelevant whether there was a rule or not, or whether said rule was enforced or not. PED's have been against the spirit of the rules for decades and everyone knows this. More than anything else PED use is dishonourable.

A much better analogy would be during the state mandated competency tests, which determine funding levels for the school and future scholarships for the students, the school's principal tells her teachers that she won't be walking around during the tests to make sure nobody is cheating, and that teachers whose students don't perform well on the test will be less likely to be granted tenure.

See what happens.

It's still stealing

It isn't stealing if the owner tells you to do it.

If the owner of your place of employment comes up to your desk with a big bowl full of cash and places it on your desk and then says to you, "help yourself" and you and then he comes along the next day and screams "thief" does he have a legit point?

The answer is no. The owners of baseball actively encouraged drug use, their management represenetatives actively encouraged drug use. When drugs are out in massive quantities in plain sight within places of employment and team representatives are administering them, providing them, and giving advice on them then one really cannot say that what the players are doing is somehow wrong or against the rules of the powers that be.

The owners owned the business and they can decide what is right and what is wrong. They decided for a very very long time that using drugs to enhance a player's performance was not wrong. They may not have come out to the public and said that but it is what they did in reality.

It is irrelevant whether there was a rule or not, or whether said rule was enforced or not. PED's have been against the spirit of the rules for decades and everyone knows this. More than anything else PED use is dishonourable.

Which decades?

What may be more appropriate in defending the drug users is this analogy: if you run a stop sign, you can tell the cop, or the judge, or your lawyer, that a lot of other people do and get away with it, so therefore you shouldn't be given a ticket. That’s true. It’s also true that it ain’t gonna do you a bit of good. Now, it may walk with your dad (your dad, not my dad), but as a matter of institutional principle set in expressed law, uh-uh. Law enforcement doesn’t have a duty to be perfect to justify itself. That ain't going to walk, though, at least not officially (you might be able to persuade the cop or the prosecutor or even the judge personally, maybe, to let you ride, but the rule isn’t invalidated because it is waived for you in a personal instance).

How about it is against the law to walk across Minnesota state lines with a duck in your arm and you one day do just that and some observer watching you cries out, "CRIMINAL!" and calls the cop, the cop arrives, shrugs, and gets back in their car.

In your example a person is disputing a law that is actively enforced. The reality of the steroid era was that it wasn't enforced whatsoever or even made against the law until pressure from Congress many years later.

It's against the rules of baseball to block the basepath without the ball to keep any runner from reaching a base safely. Whether or not the rule is enforced is irrelevant; it's a rule. Therefore, every MLB catcher who has ever blocked home plate is a dirty cheater and should be banned for life.

DB

And someday, I’m sure, sympathy will begin to curdle for these frauds. But they brought the lifeblood of America to its knees. They nearly ruined this country’s greatest institution, and jaded an entire generation of Americans.

Just stop it. Just ####### stop it.

The problem is that James's premise is wrong: there was no rule to break.

There is no rule in baseball that says a player must not murder his opponent's starting pitcher several hours before the game. Therefore, if a player murders his opponent to gain a competitive advantage, it's not cheating?

Maybe I'm unintentionally baiting an argument on semantics; if so, fine, you win. But it seems to me that someone violating local/state/provincial/federal/international laws to gain an unfair advantage is cheating, whether or not those laws have been duplicated by MLB in their rules.

The corruption of baseball's owners - which actually hasn't been established in this case, but I'll grant - doesn't make convert the players' actions into legitimate ones.

Yes, it does.

It is their game. They own it. They set the conditions of play, subject only to those matters which must be covered by collective bargaining, or which they voluntarily agree to allow others to participate in.

Major League Baseball is the business of putting on sporting exhibitions within (and without) the fabric of a championship seasons, for which they charge patrons a fee to come in and watch, and media a fee to broadcast. They set the rules for that show. You don't like those rules, go watch something else.

If you want to turn around now, and make some kind of "Field of Dreams" saccharine speech about the greater meaning and purpose of baseball, knock yourself out. Every time somebody does, the sound echoing through the largely empty skulls of the Lords of the Game is not the swelling of maudlin background music that accompanies such oratory; it's "CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! Glory Hallelujah, we got us a live one!"

So murder is against the law because it would be cheating in baseball?

Steroids are against the law because it using them is unfair in baseball?

Apparently speeding to the stadium so that you don't miss the game is also cheating. Hey, MLB didn't expressly make that against the rules but since it is against the law and breaking that law allowed a player to play it must be cheating.

So does that mean Brett Favre is a cheater because broke the law with the use of his pain killers?

Maybe I'm unintentionally baiting an argument on semantics

And maybe you're intentionally baiting an argument on semantics. Not that there's anything wrong with that, bless your heart.

But it seems to me that someone violating local/state/provincial/federal/international laws to gain an unfair advantage is cheating, whether or not those laws have been duplicated by MLB in their rules.

So everytime a pitcher deliberately hits a batter for strategic value, and every time a runner barrells into the second baseman, he is committing assault and battery, is cheating, and should be run out of the game?

Yes, it does.

It is their game. They own it. They set the conditions of play, subject only to those matters which must be covered by collective bargaining, or which they voluntarily agree to allow others to participate in.

########. They may "own" "MLB", but they don't own "baseball" and every single person who follows MLB knows "baseball" from something the owners have it in their power to create.

Well, we're only talking about MLB. We're not talking WBC or NPB or Little League.

Oh, and BTW:

CHA-CHING! CHA-CHING! Glory Hallelujah, we got us a live one!

He really did walk right into that one.

many colleges and universities have students sign a honor code explicitly prohibiting such activities.

Really? This sounds infantile. Shouldn't people who are obviously of some intelligence know the difference between right and wrong by the time they reach 18? If you treat people like children, they'll behave like children.

Did I, McCoy? In what sense? There aren't rules to baseball that exceed the confines of MLB and to which MLB is accountable? Srul can posit strawmen all he wants, but there's no saccharine speech-making involved in noting that there is a baseball that exists prior to, outside of, and probably well-beyond "MLB."

The memo was uneforceable with regards to the players and Vincent knew it and said as much in his interview with Maury Brown. What is interesting is that the memo was law for everybody else. Meaning the teams, the owners, the coaches, the trainers, hell even the ballboy had to obey this memo. Yet nobody in baseball, even after Bud Selig reissued the same memo ever got punished for violating this memo.

As I keep pointing out, there's no evidence that any player ever saw this memo.

But this memo is not about using PEDs. It's about using illegal drugs generally; all Vincent was doing was updating the list of the types of drugs banned to include steroids, because steroids had recently been made controlled substances by Congress. The penalty for using drugs under the memo -- at least the first time -- was counseling, not a suspension from the game.

there is a baseball that exists prior to, outside of, and probably well-beyond "MLB."

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high . . .

So how are things in the Greater Oz League? I hear the Emerald City is going all the way this year, if they can find a way to throw a strike to the Munchkin Marauders.

The penalty for using drugs under the memo -- at least the first time -- was counseling, not a suspension from the game.

David, David, David -- stop confusing people with the facts. We're not talking about real baseball. We're talking about Magical, Mystical, Mythical Baseball, which exists prior to, outside of, and well-beyond this puny reality of which you speak.

But it seems to me that someone violating local/state/provincial/federal/international laws to gain an unfair advantage is cheating, whether or not those laws have been duplicated by MLB in their rules.

And if Sosa used legally in the DR?

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high . . .

So how are things in the Greater Oz League? I hear the Emerald City is going all the way this year, if they can find a way to throw a strike to the Munchkin Marauders.

Are you really this delusional? You're unaware of college and HS baseball? Of Little League baseball?

I'm aware of them. But we're not discussing them.

But out of curiosity -- just how big of a problem is steroids in Little League? Inquiring minds want to know.

And if you are going to use this kind of hi-falutin' imagery of baseball "prior to, outside of, and well-beyond" MLB -- whatever the hell that means -- you are in Field of Dreams saccharine territory, whether you care to admit it or not.

I see what you're saying, but you're wrong. In each case, there is not simply the owner involved (in the strict sense of the owner of the Gap you work for, the baseball team you play for, or some other entity). The owners themselves are corrupt in these cases, and their corruption doesn't change the act from "stealing" to "non-stealing" or legitimate "income distribution." It's still stealing. Stealing is not defined just by, or primarily by, some harm to the owner, but by the act of illict taking; taking something that doesn't belong to you.

JC: Stealing is defined by harm to the owner; stealing is taking something that doesn't belong to you without permission.

What is interesting is that the memo was law for everybody else. Meaning the teams, the owners, the coaches, the trainers, hell even the ballboy had to obey this memo.

Given this, I would enjoy it if MLB was like WWE and Selig was the most obviously jacked-up guy in the entire business...

So how are things in the Greater Oz League? I hear the Emerald City is going all the way this year, if they can find a way to throw a strike to the Munchkin Marauders.

I understand that Scott Boras now represents the Lollipop Guild. The Lollipop Guild. The Lollipop Guild.

They swing a mean stick.

And if Sosa used legally in the DR?

Exactly the problem with the legality argument. It would make it "cheating" for players staying in the U.S. in the winter to train one way, but not for players going to the right foreign countries in the winter to train that same way.

And as I keep pointing out, THG ("the clear") was legal in the U.S. at the time that any ballplayer is suspected of using it.

There aren't rules to baseball that exceed the confines of MLB and to which MLB is accountable?

There are laws and regs that people have to follow and in some cases certain professionals have to follow certain laws and regs as well. But the government has not made a law or reg that pertains to major league baseball player's specifically. Well, okay they have but not in regards to drug use. You can break a law and that doesn't necessarily mean you broke the rules of your employment. In the case of steroids MLB and the union specifically made sure that PED use wasn't one of those laws that when broken would mean something within their industry.

There aren't rules to baseball that exceed the confines of MLB and to which MLB is accountable?

After they got away with creating the abomination which is the DH, I think the answer is no.

here we go
here we go
here we go AGAIN

boys
what's my weakness?

ROIDS!!!

ok then

chillin chillin
mindin my bizness
yo yall i looked
around
and i couldn't believe it

i swear
i stared

repoz
got em goin on
again
with yet ANOTHER roid piece

wicked
wicked
we need to kick it

come to our senses
and chill for a bit

i know how
he do
the voodoo that
he do
so well
oh he!!
it's a spell

all he gotta do is say roids ROIDS ROIDS!!!

They may be overachieving, Lisa, but they sure got their clock cleaned today.

cleaned?????

oh srul honey, more like their clocks dismembered then stomped UP

when your "#3" starter give up SIX runs before the second out, you in some SERIOUS sort of trouble

Rose maintains his sympathizers not because he came clean (á la Alex Rodriguez) but because he never bet against his team.

Rose maintains his sympathizers because he's white and he hustled. He's never admitted betting against his team; of course, for quite some time he never admitted betting on baseball. Then it was, "I bet on baseball, but not the Reds." I look forward to the publication of Rose's next book, in which he describes how he bet against his team. (This should happen right around the next time Pete needs some quick cash.)

Are you really this delusional? You're unaware of college and HS baseball? Of Little League baseball?

MLB sets their rules too? When did this start?

No, Dan, it is the other way around. They form the great Baseball Otherverse, which is "prior to, outside of, and well-beyond" this realm. Their rules, whether written or merely "understood" by the Great Mass of Fans, are automatically incorporated into the Rules of MLB, by the process of Mythical Osmosis.

HTH.

Rose maintains his sympathizers because he's white and he hustled. He's never admitted betting against his team; of course, for quite some time he never admitted betting on baseball. Then it was, "I bet on baseball, but not the Reds." I look forward to the publication of Rose's next book, in which he describes how he bet against his team. (This should happen right around the next time Pete needs some quick cash.)

I look forward to Rose's book after he's elected to the Hall of Fame, in which he'll describe in detail how he actually lied when he "came clean", that he did not in fact bet on baseball, but only said that he did because he knew he would never be re-instated otherwise.

Followed by the longest BTF thread in history.

DB

Followed by the longest BTF thread in history.

Or the shortest.

Speaking of long threads, WTF is up with that NBA thread?

I look forward to Rose's book after he's elected to the Hall of Fame, in which he'll describe in detail how he actually lied when he "came clean", that he did not in fact bet on baseball, but only said that he did because he knew he would never be re-instated otherwise.

Honestly, at this point I wouldn't put anything past Pete - of course, he's basically a real-life version of Joe Isuzu at this point; I'm taking anything he says with a huge grain of salt. But I think you're right about one thing - the "Rose: 'I never bet on baseball'" thread obliterate the Petco thread.

So why did they hide it?

Why did they never come out and holler into the microphone during the postgame interview "I have been taking these steroids that are not illegal or against the Players' General Agreement and they have helped my game tremendously! Thank you Steroid Companies for your great stuff!"

Because they were cheating and they were hiding that fact.

@60: easier than that -- money.

"I just won this gold medal -- thanks roids!"

And goodbye wheaties.

Yeah if it was so ethical these guys were idiots for not getting endorsements.

SCENE: Mark McGwire at breakfast table
Mark McGwire: I told my wife to stop buying Wheaties and to stock up on Andro. (CLOSE UP - He Smiles and puts his finger to his lips) Shhh, don't tell Sammy Sosa's wife.
Cue Jingle. Medium shot of product.

here we go
here we go
here we go AGAIN

boys
what's my weakness?

Yeah, it's a drag for the mandarins and cognoscenti, but battles for the soul of the culture are, like any other struggles, nine-tenths repetitive drudgery. On other sites I have participated in, some can't understand why we come down so hard on the creationists and general religious fundamentalist. It's really simple: if you don't keep them at bay, if they think you will not defend yourself, they will go right for your throat. This has been shown to be true because it has actually happened and shows no evidence of dying down. Boring repetition is the upshot, and the curse, but that's because some know that their victory can only come about by that collective memory loss Bill James wrote so eloquently about on another thread. They count, too, on that intuitive first impression transcending actual thought and study. How many times have you heard with Rose, well, it's not like he betted on his team to lose. You explain it all to them, and like the essential creationist type that they are they go away for a while, then come back, born again virgins, and repeat the same exact old stuff that has been discredited innumerable times before. You have to fight both a mindset and the fact that that mindset may establish its army and navy, its institutions (see Discovery Institute).

many colleges and universities have students sign a honor code explicitly prohibiting such activities.

Really? This sounds infantile.

Yes. At the University of Virginia, the honor code pledge is taken very seriously. And at Vanderbilt, freshman sign the honor code collectively during the first week of school which is then framed and displayed in the student hall.

Meanwhile, Jackson was acquitted of his crimes

Worth noting. Jackson et al were not charged with fixing the world series. They were charged with defrauding and discrediting the public and Charles Comiskey through criminal conspiracy.

The judge gave the following charge to the jury:

"The State must prove that it was the intent of the ballplayers and gamblers charged with conspiracy through throwing the World Series, to defraud the public and others, not merely to throw ballgames."

Srul I've argued many times that the head-hunting after a HR that Bunning et al indulged in is a far worse offense. The message broadly speaking is, Skill's not working out. Let's try violence. (or intimidation if you prefer)

Except that -- even though it was dangerous, and possibly criminal, it wasn't considered cheating by any of the participants. Just a part of hard-nosed baseball.

In the early days of the game, it got so rough and rowdy that, if the ump wasn't looking, guys would grab baserunners and slow them down, trip them, etc. This rough style of play eventually helped the more gentlemanly American League get off the ground, by offering a different style of play.

The thing about baseball that too many of the children who participate in this site fail to remember, if they ever knew, is that it WASN'T a "kid's game" to start with. It was a hard game for hard men. And "cheating", of various kinds, has been part of it since the beginning.

Baseball is Ty Cobb sharpening his spikes, Gaylord Perry loading up the ball, the San Francisco Giants abetting the Shot Heard Round the World with binoculars and telegraph, Graig Nettles loading his bat with superballs, and every single batter stepping to the plate and erasing the batter's box so he can stand wherever he damn well feels like.

The more genteel people try to make it, the more people spout off about high minded ethics and this "important national pasttime" and contaminate the world with their syrupy "Field of Dreams" sentiments, the less it is good old fashioned hard ball.

Yes. At the University of Virginia, the honor code pledge is taken very seriously. And at Vanderbilt, freshman sign the honor code collectively during the first week of school which is then framed and displayed in the student hall.

At Princeton, we had an honor code which we signed during orientation week; on each exam, we had to write and sign the honor code: "I pledge my honor that I did not violate the honor code on this exam." (The code required both that we not cheat and that we turn in anybody else we knew to be cheating.) Based upon said code, exams were unproctored and we were permitted to have our books with us at our seats.

It was a big adjustment, psychologically, when I went to law school without such an honor code, and the exams were heavily proctored and (except, obviously, on open-book exams) we were required to leave our books/backpacks etc. at the back of the room.

So why did they hide it?

did they? Really?

They didn't inject in front of reporters. They didn't say "thank heavens for roids" in interviews. But then steroids were a scheduled drug and against the law ... so it's the same way (most) folks don't smoke marijuana walking down the street. The coke guys in the 70s weren't snorting in the locker room either. And while the reporters probably knew, nobody ever called out the hungover players either.

But they pretty openly talked about it amongst themselves -- this is clear from the Mitchell report. McGwire kept the andro in his locker. Barry Bonds agreed to have a NY Times Magazine piece written about his training regimen (with co-stars Anderson and Sheffield) and wasn't hiding his connection to BALCO (though this would also be consistent with his not knowing they were steroids :-). And of course greenie use was wide open.

By the same logic, football players heading into the locker room to get a shot of pain killers are also cheating. I remember in the McMahon Bear days that, in one game, they gave him a shot of something right on the sideline ... and had a group of players huddle around to try to keep it hidden from the cameras (didn't work). Was that cheating?

Now, the interesting question that can't be that hard to answer but I don't think anyone has asked -- who the hell was supplying greenies for 25 players every day?

Now, the interesting question that can't be that hard to answer but I don't think anyone has asked -- who the hell was supplying greenies for 25 players every day?

We're not here to talk about the past.

At Princeton, we had an honor code which we signed during orientation week; on each exam, we had to write and sign the honor code: "I pledge my honor that I did not violate the honor code on this exam." (The code required both that we not cheat and that we turn in anybody else we knew to be cheating.) Based upon said code, exams were unproctored and we were permitted to have our books with us at our seats.

It was a big adjustment, psychologically, when I went to law school without such an honor code, and the exams were heavily proctored and (except, obviously, on open-book exams) we were required to leave our books/backpacks etc. at the back of the room.

Which method worked better in preventing cheating? (I'd imagine the answer would depend on the caliber of student, and the weight that the history of the tradition places upon anyone who thinks about cheating.) And does the honor code outweigh the criminal code when it comes to informing?

But they brought the lifeblood of America to its knees. They nearly ruined this country’s greatest institution, and jaded an entire generation of Americans.

My reading of the news over the last nine months is that folks like this deserve large checks from the government.


when your "#3" starter give up SIX runs before the second out, you in some SERIOUS sort of trouble

Take it from this Braves fan, he's a much better pitcher when he's on the DL.

I tend to agree with Gaelan and villageidiom here. Steroid use before an explicit ban broke no rule. But this is sports; people are always looking for an edge that violates the spirit of sportsmanship. Usually it's only after they find it that a rule gets promulgated.

Geez it's early in the morning if I'm using the word "promulgated" in a sentence. [bangs head on desk]

When I taught at Princeton, I don't think there was much cheating going on. I also never heard, even second-/third-hand anecdotally, of anyone turning in a cheater. At the U of Texas campus where I teach now, there's a good deal of plagiarism, and crib sheets are not unknown in exams. There's no honor code, but students are also more likely to alert professors to cheating.

What does that have to do with baseball ... well, as others have said, it seems like the "professors" in MLB for the most part dug the cheating. And till recently, the reaction in MLB to steroid use was to start using steroids yourself; only a puritan or a weasel complained about their colleagues' cheating. The scale has now tipped well the other way, at least in terms of rhetoric.

Which method worked better in preventing cheating? (I'd imagine the answer would depend on the caliber of student, and the weight that the history of the tradition places upon anyone who thinks about cheating.) And does the honor code outweigh the criminal code when it comes to informing?

I can't speak for UVa or Princeton, but my experience at Washington and Lee with a similar honor system ('On my honor, I have neither given nor received any unacknowledged aid on this exam/paper/assignment') was that cheating was rare--and rightfully regarded as a major scandal. By comparison, Georgia Tech (my graduate school) has had several major cheating scandals across different colleges in recent memory.

IMO, the major factor in determining whether a university has an effective honor system is the degree of community and tradition: small schools (or large schools that started off small) have clear advantages for this.

I have nothing to say about steroids.

If you want to make an analogy to cheating in school, it should be a math class and newly-invented calculators are the steroids.

Kids start bringing calculators into math class and grades soar. The teacher wants to ban the calculators, but he must first gain the approval of the student body (union). Naturally, the students delay the implementation of any rules about calculators and there's no pressure from the fans (i.e. their parents), because they love the higher grades.

Let's never forget that one reason that steroids were not "against the rules" for so long was because creating the rule required the approval of the steroid users, who were instead laughing all of the way to the bank. It wasn't until legal pressure was brought to bear on the players that they suddenly relented.

Which method worked better in preventing cheating? (I'd imagine the answer would depend on the caliber of student, and the weight that the history of the tradition places upon anyone who thinks about cheating.) And does the honor code outweigh the criminal code when it comes to informing?

It's difficult to separate the effect of the code from the varying caliber of students different institutions attract. Princeton, Vandy, and UVa enroll students who take their school work very seriously. That doesn't mean they're beyond cheating, but I suspect the absence of a honor code wouldn't affect the frequency of cheating by all that much. The honor code pledge is more a symbolic and ritualisitc gesture than something that installs "character" and "virtue."

Yeah if it was so ethical these guys were idiots for not getting endorsements.

Have guys really forgotten Rafael Palmeiro and his Viagra endorsement?

So why did they hide it?


The quick and easy answer is because it was illegal. The longer answer is that the players didn't really hide it. Sure they didn't announce on TV but there is a ton of stuff in all of our lives that we are not going to say in front of microphone. Baseball knew these players were on steroids and the players knew the teams didn't have a problem with it.

From my own experience I have found that cheating at schools exist and is pretty vast. The difference between a prestigious school and say a JC is that at the prestigious school the students are much smarter and sophisticated about their cheating.

The difference between a prestigious school and say a JC is that at the prestigious school the students are much smarter and sophisticated about their cheating.

From my experiences, the pool of "intelligence" between prestigious schools and not so prestigious school isn't all that great. In terms of motivation, cultural capital, and connections though, a world of difference.

Which method worked better in preventing cheating? (I'd imagine the answer would depend on the caliber of student, and the weight that the history of the tradition places upon anyone who thinks about cheating.) And does the honor code outweigh the criminal code when it comes to informing?

I can't speak for UVa or Princeton, but my experience at Washington and Lee with a similar honor system ('On my honor, I have neither given nor received any unacknowledged aid on this exam/paper/assignment') was that cheating was rare--and rightfully regarded as a major scandal. By comparison, Georgia Tech (my graduate school) has had several major cheating scandals across different colleges in recent memory.

IMO, the major factor in determining whether a university has an effective honor system is the degree of community and tradition: small schools (or large schools that started off small) have clear advantages for this.

It's difficult to separate the effect of the code from the varying caliber of students different institutions attract. Princeton, Vandy, and UVa enroll students who take their school work very seriously. That doesn't mean they're beyond cheating, but I suspect the absence of a honor code wouldn't affect the frequency of cheating by all that much. The honor code pledge is more a symbolic and ritualisitc gesture than something that installs "character" and "virtue."

From my own experience I have found that cheating at schools exist and is pretty vast. The difference between a prestigious school and say a JC is that at the prestigious school the students are much smarter and sophisticated about their cheating.

I was at Duke in the early / mid-60's and they had a very strict honor code that punished by expulsions that IIRC went unreported in the Chronicle. I have no idea how effective it was as a deterrent. But since at the time Duke was pretty much a dumb jock party school, it's hard to imagine that the honor code "culture" had nearly as much effect on behavior as the cumulative effect of the news of those expulsions.

I think it's pretty obvious now why Bill James suddenly came out with his steroid article after years of silence. Clearly he had advance notice that the Ortiz and Ramirez drug-positives were going to leak and was pushed to cobble together his tissue-paper-thin justification for steroid cheats before it broke. Getting ahead of the curve, it seems.

Clearly he had advance notice...

Do you have any evidence for this statement?

No, I'm just semi-trolling.

I was at Duke in the early / mid-60's and they had a very strict honor code that punished by expulsions that IIRC went unreported in the Chronicle. I have no idea how effective it was as a deterrent.

Richard Nixon graduated third in his class in June 1937 from Duke University School of Law.

Just sayin'.

DB