Joe Posnanski got off the phone with the Royals’ ticket office and banged out a hell of an essay this morning on Willie Mays, greenies and cheating that flows quite nicely with what some of us were discussing in the Hall of Fame thread this morning:
Baseball in Willie Mays time, like baseball in every time, was rife with cheating and racism and alcoholism and small-mindedness. You know, people love to talk about the players of the steroid era cheating the game. But did anyone in baseball history more willfully and brashly cheat the game than Leo Durocher and the 1951 Giants, who rigged an elaborate sign-stealing system that undoubtedly helped the Giants catch the Dodgers and win the pennant, win the pennant, win the pennant.
There’s much more to it than that -- amphetamines mostly -- and it’s worth a full read. After doing so, I would ask that someone please explain to me the basis for withholding a Hall of Fame vote from, say, Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens.