Cheaters deserve their day of recognition
Everyone cheats. We cheat time by speeding. Cheat age by surgery. Cheat paywalls — ahem — by sharing passwords.
Athletes are no different. Performance-enhancing drugs. The 4-foot gimme putt. Pass interference. Flopping.
If it breaks the rules or provides an unfair advantage, it’s cheating.
Such illicit behavior should not be condoned, but given that it so commonly threads through our sports fabric, it may be best to set aside one day a year to recognize cheaters. Consider it a form of confession, which could prove cathartic. Celebrate deceit for 24 hours and maybe it rids the skulduggery from our system.
Probably not, but worth a try. Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery.
If a National Day of Cheating is in order, there is no better date than July 16, the month and day Cleveland Indians pitcher Jason Grimsley crawled above ceiling tiles inside Chicago’s Comiskey Park into the umpires’ room to replace the illegally corked bat of teammate Albert Belle with one that was cork-free.
Actually, the date was July 15, 1994 — 25 years ago Monday — but this is a column about cheating, so …
Anyway, Grimsley crawled about 100 feet atop a cinder-block wall above the false ceiling after umpires confiscated Belle’s bat at the bequest of White Sox manager Gene Lamont, who had been tipped off that Belle’s bats were hollowed out and filled with cork to make the head of the bat lighter and easier to swing.
Grimsley accomplished his mission impossible undetected. Unfortunately for Belle and the Indians, the bat Grimsley exchanged for the illegal one belonged to teammate Paul Sorrento — Belle’s were all corked — and once the umpires saw “Sorrento” stamped on the barrel, well, umps may be blind but they’re not stupid. Belle received a 10-game suspension.
So July 16 it is. And what better year to inaugurate our one-day cheat-fest than 2019, which comes 100 years after the Black Sox scandal that led to a lifetime ban for eight Chicago White Sox players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Jackson and his teammates did not cheat in the technical sense of trying to gain an advantage; more a disadvantage — their crime was accepting payments from a gambler to deliberately lose games in the 1919 World Series won by the Cincinnati Reds — but baseball felt cheated all the same.
Baseball is the king of team sports cheating. Decades before Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were ingesting and injecting steroids, major leaguers were doctoring baseballs and corking bats to gain a competitive advantage. The game is so replete with unethical behavior that even its stewards cannot resist contributing to the duplicity.
Is MLB on a record pace for home runs because the ball is juiced? Does Pete Rose have a barbershop bowl cut? Baseball somehow gets away with its antics, probably because to police player conduct each inning would add two more hours to every game. Not to mention that baseball rules often seem more like suggestions. Step on second base while turning a double play? Optional. Hidden ball trick? Ha-ha. Well played.
Compare that with golf, where professional gentlemen — not counting the whack-a-holes who use the foot wedge as their 14th club — are expected to act like it.
Not that all always do. I knew a writer who accused Hall of Famer Ray Floyd of cheating during the Masters. Aghast officials in green jackets nearly had the writer fitted for a straitjacket just for suggesting such a thing.
Finally, July is the best month to honor sports cheaters, considering the Tour de France is in full swing. Maybe Lance Armstrong can serve as grand marshal of the first Cheater’s Day parade?