2 Comments

We have learned through the years that professional sports teams will try to get away with just about anything – from PEDs to filming opponents’ practices to underinflating footballs to scuffing baseballs. League hierarchy has responded to such cheating only when compelled or embarrassed enough to do so. As the Traveling Wilburys sang, everything’s legal, as long as you don’t get caught.

You raise the question of how baseball will handle the current sign-stealing scandal, whether it will deal with sinners in suits with the same severity as it has punished players. I find it so ironic that the commissioner who presided over baseball during the PED era – whose head-in-the-sand leadership encouraged, or at least prolonged the scandal – has been enshrined in Cooperstown while the Hall of Fame electorate has excluded players who used PEDs. That tells us pretty much everything we need to know.

Expand full comment