Connolly: As fans, would you be OK with your team cheating if it meant winning a World Series title?

[Moose Milligan]

Dan Connolly over at @TonySoprano's favorite website, The Athletic, posed the question in the title.  It's not really a great piece of journalism or anything, he just wanted to see what people would say.  Most people said no, some said yes.  If you've got an Athletic subscription, it's worth checking out.

Anyway, I'm opening it up as a poll/discussion here.  I figure what most of you will say is "no," just curious to see if there are any dissenters.

[Aristotelian]

Winners never cheat and cheaters never win. No point in winning if it is just going to have an asterisk.

[Moose Milligan]

I voted yes.   And here's what I wrote:

I’d be “ok” with it, per the title of the column. I wouldn’t be thumping my chest about it.

It would taint it for me, for sure. I was born in late ‘81, so I was two when they won in ‘83. The Orioles, for most of my life, have been bad. They haven’t particularly come close since I can remember and don’t have one on the horizon.

I have a good friend who’s in his early 30s and is a die hard Yankees fan. His dad is from NJ, so it’s legit, his dad raised him that way. And every time he makes snide remarks about the Orioles I remind him that he’ll never know what it’s like to suffer as a baseball fan and that IF the Orioles somehow can win a World Series he also won’t know the joy that I’ll be experiencing. There’s no possible way. An Orioles WS won would be way sweeter than any Yankees victory he’s ever seen. If I recall correctly, the Yankees have had one losing season during his lifetime.

Cubs fans, Cardinals fans, any other teams fans that are posting in here and saying “no” aren’t taking one thing into consideration: they don’t share a division with the Yankees and Red Sox, two teams that can easily double our payroll.

And while payroll isn’t everything, it certainly helps. It helps a great deal. I’m not ignoring the Rays who have found ways to field great teams with a limited amount of money. But the Rays can’t afford to gamble on contracts like Sale and Price. The Sox can, and if those deals don’t look good they can just spend more to cover it up.

On top of that, their douchebag fans that invade Camden Yards every summer are pretty insufferable.

Does this justify cheating? No, not really. But I’d take a tainted title if it meant screwing over two teams with insufferable fan bases and unlimited resources. As I said, it would take some of the initial joy out of it, but it’d also mean the Sox or Yankees didn’t win.

 

[TommyPickles]

My friends and I were recently having this discussion too.  We all said no, but we did concede that if the Orioles were in the Astros' place, we probably would have more serious questions about whether other teams were also doing something similar.  It would seem like more of a moral gray area. 

Whereas, as an O's fan with no stake in the Astros, I'm 100% in the "What they did was uniquely awful. Take away the banners.  Ban the players involved, at least for some period of time" hardline camp.

[DrungoHazewood]

I'd rather lose with integrity than win as a scumbag.  Life shouldn't just be transactional.  

[joelala]

Yes,  because I at least could have seen and enjoyed the Orioles in a World Series. Tainted or not, that would be worth it for me. If it came out that the ravens cheated in 2012, I still will always have the memory of watching and celebrating that championship. 

[Philip]

It is a terribly sad statement on society that this question is even considered to be worth asking.

[Philip]

52 minutes ago, TommyPickles said:

We probably would have more serious questions about whether other teams were also doing something similar.

That is the old, “well everybody else does it too”argument and it should have died on the playground when we were five.

A bad thing that everybody does is not made less bad because everybody does it.

[DrungoHazewood]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

I voted yes.   And here's what I wrote:

I’d be “ok” with it, per the title of the column. I wouldn’t be thumping my chest about it.

It would taint it for me, for sure. I was born in late ‘81, so I was two when they won in ‘83. The Orioles, for most of my life, have been bad. They haven’t particularly come close since I can remember and don’t have one on the horizon.

I have a good friend who’s in his early 30s and is a die hard Yankees fan. His dad is from NJ, so it’s legit, his dad raised him that way. And every time he makes snide remarks about the Orioles I remind him that he’ll never know what it’s like to suffer as a baseball fan and that IF the Orioles somehow can win a World Series he also won’t know the joy that I’ll be experiencing. There’s no possible way. An Orioles WS won would be way sweeter than any Yankees victory he’s ever seen. If I recall correctly, the Yankees have had one losing season during his lifetime.

Cubs fans, Cardinals fans, any other teams fans that are posting in here and saying “no” aren’t taking one thing into consideration: they don’t share a division with the Yankees and Red Sox, two teams that can easily double our payroll.

And while payroll isn’t everything, it certainly helps. It helps a great deal. I’m not ignoring the Rays who have found ways to field great teams with a limited amount of money. But the Rays can’t afford to gamble on contracts like Sale and Price. The Sox can, and if those deals don’t look good they can just spend more to cover it up.

On top of that, their douchebag fans that invade Camden Yards every summer are pretty insufferable.

Does this justify cheating? No, not really. But I’d take a tainted title if it meant screwing over two teams with insufferable fan bases and unlimited resources. As I said, it would take some of the initial joy out of it, but it’d also mean the Sox or Yankees didn’t win.

 

You'd be all right with the Angelos boys paying a mobster $100M to get the Orioles' opponent or the umps to throw the World Series, just so long as the Yanks or Sox are on the losing end?

[Moose Milligan]

1 minute ago, DrungoHazewood said:

You'd be all right with the Angelos boys paying a mobster $100M to get the Orioles' opponent or the umps to throw the World Series, just so long as the Yanks or Sox are on the losing end?

 

Drungo, I'm aware that you think such things are possible still.  I don't believe organized crime has touched professional sports in quite some time.  The last time it happened was Tim Donaghy, the NBA ref about 12 or 13 years ago who was working with some low level mafia wannabe types.  And then I think you'd have to go back quite a ways.  

For me, pro sports are a step or two above the WWE.  I don't look to these people for moral integrity, I certainly don't expect these games to be on the up and up from a number of perspectives...from whatever these players are injecting to their butts before the game to banging on trashcans to alert a batter of a curveball...I just don't think many of these players/teams/games are on the up and up.

That said, would I be "all-right" with your wildly implausible scenario?  Sure.  As I said, I wouldn't be wildly enthusiastic about winning a World Series that was tainted but I'd rather it be us than the Yankees or Sox.  

[ChrisP]

Guess I'm in the minority on this one...

[GuidoSarducci]

Depends on how you define cheating. If it was something that seriously called into question the legitimacy of the championship, then the answer would be no.

If it was something relatively minor, then whatever.

My football team is the New Orleans Saints.  When the Bountygate scandal broke, some people called into question the legitimacy of the championship,  But that didn't last very long.  I am more than fine trading Bountygate for the Saints only Superbowl. 

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, GuidoSarducci said:

Depends on how you define cheating. If it was something that seriously called into question the legitimacy of the championship, then the answer would be no.

If it was something relatively minor, then whatever.

My football team is the New Orleans Saints.  When the Bountygate scandal broke, some people called into question the legitimacy of the championship,  But that didn't last very long.  I am more than fine trading Bountygate for the Saints only Superbowl. 

I answered “no” but the above probably reflects my views more accurately.   I wouldn’t condone even minor cheating but it wouldn’t necessarily detract from my enjoyment of winning a championship if it was something that wasn’t likely to have impacted the outcome, or was something that the majority of other teams also were doing.    

[interloper]

It really depends. I voted no on the presumption that we're talking Astros-level scandal. That would be gut punch and I'd never feel good about it and that would nag at me for life. 

It sucked even going through the Raffy thing and that team was garbage. Imagine that but the team is actually good and accomplished great things. Guh. No thanks.

That said, I would potentially vote yes under some lesser/more gray area circumstances, but not sure what. 

[ArtVanDelay]

8 hours ago, Aristotelian said:

Winners never cheat and cheaters never win. No point in winning if it is just going to have an asterisk.

Red Sox, Astros and Patriots would beg to differ.