Cheaters are Baseball.
From Grokipedia:
The Black Sox Scandal refers to the fixing of the 1919 World Series, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team accepted bribes from gamblers to intentionally lose to the Cincinnati Reds.
In a fantastically funny tornado of events, the literal Jewish Mob (as in Mafia) pays to fix the World Series, the White Sox take a dive, are found out, and Baseball changes forever. But, Baseball is still the same.
The Astro’s cheating scandal, the recent “Sticky Stuff” controversy brought to light by highly controversial and blacklisted pitcher Trevor Bauer whose youtube channel I have enjoyed greatly during his time in NPB, all these things are intrinsic to baseball. The fact that the sport has retained so much of its character for a hundred years is in no small part due to the fact that small leverages are constantly exercised by players and managers to get an edge. It’s like in racing, when a car’s team invents a way around a rule, that is Baseball! Inarguably the best hitter in the history of the sport is Barry Bonds who will never be in the Hall of Fame because of steroids- which can not have impacted his actual ability to make contact, the best all around player is probably Pete Rose- banned for gambling! He died banned. If being a fucking nerd was a crime they’d have banned Tony Gwynn from Cooperstown too. Shohei Ohtani was so obviously guilty of betting on the game they put his interpreter in prison for it because he was too important to marketing to throw away. I tip my hat to Shohei for that particular truth nuke.
It is a game of perceptions and inches. Is the guy safe on first? Its up to two guys in black to decide. Baseball teams employ a guy (The Manager) whose job it is to run out there and go ballistic when a call is particularly bad. Instant replay usually doesn’t even help that much, that is how dialed in the athletes are on routine things like the ball to first, double plays, and stopping the steal at home. But Manhattan, in its infinite wisdom, are choosing to trial away the margin of error in the sport. Pitchers throughout baseball history have relied on the perception of the balls path to fool not only hitters, but umpires too- its a huge part of the job of the Catcher. How well can he frame the ball? The best in my lifetime in my opinion was Buster Posey (who has an equally retarded rule named after him coincidentally). What does defensive player of the year mean to a catcher who can’t frame the ball? How good a backstop he is?
Umpires, good bad and ugly are personalities, and a part of the sport. The reign of terror that was Angel Hernandez’s 20 something year long career, as bad as it was and for however many games he fucked up, is infinitely more charming and more personable than knowing that the greatest arms ever to come out of spring training are not training literally to just hit the box. Put a detector under first base and a sandbag where the first baseman should be, that’d solve every close double play ball. As a matter of fact just put a big net in center field because statistically fly balls to center are sac fly’s and just move the runners up a bag and count the out. Its this sort of incremental tweaking that fucks the sport up, as President Trump puts it so eloquently “THE KICK IS AWFUL!!!” and it fucking is! Its not exciting to watch that part of Football anymore, and soon the magic of baseball is going to be seriously threatened by ABS.
