The cycle of a cheating scandal, in the popular imagination, goes something like this: Greatness, followed by suspicion and eventual exposure of the misdeeds, followed by the satisfying post-cheating period where the swindlers are shamed and, most importantly, taken down a notch.
Baseball is again awash in concerns about “cheating” amid MLB’s dramatic midseason crackdown on foreign substances. And again, echoing the steroids era and the Astros cheating scandal, we risk overstating the impact of the edge gained by evading the rules.
Yes, brazen and mischievous cheating should be condemned and banished — though in the current case, pitchers’ use of sticky substances was so ubiquitous it’s hard to say it conferred anyone an unfair advantage.