I am also really tired hearing Yankees fans gloat about Big Papi and how the Red Sox are cheaters and frauds etc. etc.
My roommate showed me this story about the Athletics and Yankees relationship. They traded A LOT between the late 50's and early 60's.
Somehow the Yankees always seemed to get the good players, like Roger Maris...and trade old parts that they didn't need back...or they'd trade young players to the Athletics and trade back for them when they got good.
This is a little known story, quite interesting and just as bad as steriod use...treating another major league team as their own farm team...
http://athletics.scout.com/2/621936.html
http://www.wcnet.org/~dlfleitz/kca.htm
I'd love to hear what Yankees fans think of that.
That doesn't change the fact that david ortiz has flat out lied to us all since they started investigating for steroid use. Ortiz has been one of, if not the most vocal players in saying there should be harsher punishments for people testing positive. Now he shows a positive test for roids? What a crock of shit. As a yankee fan I always hated Ortiz, but respected his style of play. Now I think he's a scumbag and I take solace in the fact that he isn't even batting his own weight.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Yankees, it was a different game back then. Steinbrenner hadn't even started ship building empire that gave him his millions; most of the players cheated by scuffing the ball or spitting on it; the first free agent wouldn't be set free for another 20-25 years; the A's were in Kansas City; I wasn't born; you weren't born; Steph Labbe wasn't born; Meghan Cunningham wasn't born.
Anyways, at that time, the A's owner, Arnold Johnson, had been voted by the league to take ownership of the A's. The candidate he beat out was a friend of Bill Veeck's and the league voted against him because they didn't like Veeck's unorthodox management style. The league new that Johnson was a pawn of the Yankees. 7 of the then 9 teams in the league, including the Red Sox, voted for Johnson, knowing full well what he stood for.
Yes this was unethical, but so was the majority of the league. The owners were at fault for being irrational.
And I'm not trying to say what the Yankees did was right, just trying to put it into perspective.
I think we'd both agree that both the steriods and trading between teams is unethical and wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think everyone who has tested positive lied about it once.
I will also say that big market teams still do swallow up the talent of small market teams...and I think that is bad for the game.