MLB scandal: That hundred-twenty-year ethical problem
By Rick Soisson
Why MLB Scandal Discipline Will Remain Loose
The first reason will seem fairly cynical to some, but human nature intersecting with sport somehow encourages cheating and other moral lapses that corrupt contests’ honesty and may even endanger not only those being cheated, but the cheaters themselves. This is particularly true at the highest levels of professional sport, where the very best competitors are constantly challenged by those who are really not very different from them in ability.
Oh, you may say, “Well, guys like Dale Murphy don’t cheat. Roly-poly John Kruk certainly wasn’t taking steroids.” These assertions are seemingly true. Humans are all different to a certain extent. Statistically, however, someone will be cheating, or trying to, always. And this isn’t entirely a matter of raking in the big bucks.
The decades-long abuse of Dexedrine and Benzedrine, for example, actually began in the 1940s, after ballplayers had been exposed to amphetamines in the military during World War II. Legend has it that slugger Ralph Kiner was initially shocked to see players abuse such drugs, but he eventually said, “All the trainers in all the ballparks had them.”
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But MLB players weren’t raking in piles of money for the most part in the ’40s. Except for the very best, most players had off-season jobs or businesses.
Just last month Inquirer.com writer Frank Fitzpatrick recapped the first Philadelphia Phillies MLB scandal, a comic, sign-stealing matter that involved shocking the third base coach through the ground with underground electrical wiring. This occurred in 1900, when MLB players were paid peanuts by modern standards. And the Fightin’s “got off scot-free” while the generally “boosterish” newspapermen fretted, as one did, “This may be honest baseball, but the general public has nothing but contempt for people who play with marked cards.”
Cheating or risking (usually others’) injury has been an MLB scandal for well over a century. Poor players have cheated; rich ones have as well. Relatively weak players have done it; so have the stars. Willie Mays and Lenny Dykstra were both accused of using PEDS; Dykstra as much as admitted it, casually referring to “some real good vitamins” in front of multiple sportswriters in 1993.