So if he is shown to have cheated in a court of law do you remove him from the record books?

And if you do(I would)who do you give the record to Big Mac another known cheater or do you go all the way back to Maris? and 62
Chris | Homepage | 02.14.08 - 8:03 pm | #

I'd go back to Maris' 61. Of course, since it was likely a MLB-administered test, and Bud (side question, can I use the term I did back at my site?) did nothing of substance when McGwire had illegal substances in his locker in 1998, Bud won't do jack shit.
steveegg | Homepage | 02.14.08 - 8:07 pm | #

I'm no Bonds fan, but baseball would have a major difficulty either taking the record away or even putting an asterisk on it. Why? Because what Bonds did, while against the law, wasn't against baseball rules. In the moral sense, he cheated. By baseball rules, not so much.

I think we can view some records as tainted, but to scrub them from the books is to open a pandora's box that will render the record books confusing to the point of meaningless. Where's the line? Are amphetamines a performance enhancer? If so, they go back at least to the 60's. What if a an old vet says that Maris used greenies? Do we strip that away, too? And what about football? If there is a sport that has skipped under the radar for PEDs, it is football. Chris made the most obvious point in regards to O-linemen the other day. Just think of what the bright light of truth would do to the football record books. Those guys have gotten a lot bigger comparatively than baseball players over the last 40 years.

I think you let the records stand, but you taint the hell out of them and give fans reason to cheer whole heartedly for them to be broken.
Jib | Homepage | 02.14.08 - 10:59 pm | #