Why Barry Bonds' Home Run Record Chase Isn't the Worst Thing Ever in Baseball

May 9, 2006 — -- As Barry Bonds stands poised to surpass Babe Ruth and take dead aim at Hank Aaron, thousands of (self-appointed) guardians of the game are seething. "What could be worse than baseball's most beloved record being compromised by an alleged steroid abuser?" we mutter in righteous anger.

The answer, fellow seamheads, is "plenty." Baseball history is littered with scandals that make Barry's ugly assault on 714 and 755 look tame. Make no mistake: It will be dismaying to see Bonds lord his arrogance -- not to mention his puffed-out pectorals -- over us as he points skyward after No. 715.

But it's not even close to the low point of the pastime's history. As Babe Ruth's biographer, the inimitable Robert Creamer, is fond of pointing out, "Baseball must be a marvelous game to survive the awful things that people have done to it."

Topping the awful things, of course, is the infamous Black Sox fix of the 1919 World Series. Hugh Fullerton, the reporter who is credited with uncovering the Black Sox scandal, believed that 1919 was just one of many early postseasons tainted by corruption. Cheating -- or as the players preferred to call it, "arranging games" -- was more widespread in the first three decades of the 20th century than even serious students of baseball lore suspect. And it didn't end with the "eight men out": Skullduggery continued to haunt the game well after the eight Black Sox players were banished in the early '20s.

Baseball in that era was almost as slippery as boxing or horse racing. Far too often, the fix was in. League presidents, owners, managers, coaches and players all routinely consorted with bookies and hustlers. Wild wagering was as much a part of baseball's saloon culture as a shot and a beer.

Many of early baseball's most celebrated figures are linked to disquieting episodes, among them Hall of Famers Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, Cy Young, John McGraw, Wilbert Robinson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Rabbit Maranville, Frankie Frisch, Eddie Collins and Chief Bender. Gambling-induced chicanery might have marred some epochal World Series, including the first modern one in 1903 between the Boston Pilgrims and the Pittsburgh Pirates, the New York Giants' trouncing of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1905, the "Miracle" Boston Braves' dramatic sweep of the A's in 1914 and the Chicago Cubs' ham-handed loss to the Red Sox in 1918.