“I don’t advocate breaking the rules, but I do advocate testing their elasticity.”
— Hall of Fame owner Bill Veeck
“I’ve been in pro baseball since 1914 and I’ve cheated, or watched someone on my team cheat, in practically every game.”
— Hall of Fame second baseman Rogers Hornsby
Baseball people have been cheating for 150 years. They have defaced baseballs, enhanced bats, taken drugs, skipped bases, modified the playing field, signed underaged players, used binoculars or video cameras to steal signs, and much more. They are not, as a rule, bad people–they are competitive people, dedicating their life to a sport where they are heavily rewarded for winning. The sharpest of them, the most innovative, look for ways to straddle the line between the lawful and unlawful, and on occasion, wanting a small edge that might win a few games or save their careers, have strayed over that line.
“I don’t know how they’re going to go about it, but somewhere down the line there have got to be rules to stop the cheating. You either play by the books or you don’t play, whether you’re a pitcher or a hitter.”
— Hall of Fame manager Whitey Herzog
Here we present the history of rule-breaking in baseball. Why are some forms of cheating tolerated and even openly joked about while others lead to scandal? Where is the line between deception and cheating, and how has that changed over the decades? We explore these questions and more in our book.
a few short quotes
a few short quotes
a few short quotes
a few short quotes