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Cheating in Sports
I went down the Philadelphia for a wedding the weekend the 2010 World Cup was starting. Friday night my brother stated that Thierry Henry would only be remembered for his infamous handball against Ireland that vaulted France into the World Cup and knocked out the Irish. That seems kind of ridiculous to me; Henry is one of the best French players of this era, no? Why would he be remembered for this? My brother's assertion is that this was an egregious act of cheating.

His claims immediately reminded me of the intensity of the condemnation of Alex Rodriguez's "slap" in the 2004 ALCS versus Boston. The howls of indignation from Red Sox Nation seemed overblown considering that A-Rod got called out for knocking the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove on the way to first base. (Then, when Dustin Pedroia did the same thing in the 2007 ALCS we had confirmation that it was all just some good old hating.) I contended that Rodriguez's play was no more than a personal foul in basketball. Had it not been called it would have given the Yankees an unfair advantage. That's why rules were put in place to stop it and referees or umpires were tasked with policing the game.

A-Rod, like Henry, and now like Luis Suarez, was vilified for his actions. I did not watch the Uruguay-Ghana game but the replay shows Suarez intentionally blocked a goal with his hand. He was given a red card and sent off. So is Suarez a cheater and a disgrace to the World Cup? I say no. He broke the rules and was penalized for it. One of the big things that makes me hate a player is if s/he tries to hurt another player when they break the rules. A linebacker may being trying to hurt a quaterback by knocking him down but if he's doing it with a legal hit then that's part of the game. If it's a late hit or a hit deemed illegal by the NFL then that makes him a dirty player. Neither Rodirguez, Henry, nor Suarez tried to hurt another player.

I think there is also another category of cheating that occurs off of the field. This includes performance enhancing drug-use for any sport (regardless of how much it helps it is still illegal), corking your bat in baseball, putting "stick em" on your hands in football, etc. I categorize these as similarly contemptible because referees and league officials do not check for this on a game to game basis. It's also not obvious to the naked eye, even if you were looking at the offending player in the process of cheating. If we look at a gray-area case, my definition excludes a pitcher doctoring a baseball because that must happen in the field of play, in the view of an umpire.

For anyone to claim that Rodriguez, Henry, or Suarez were cheating they would have to explain what they considered holding by an offensive lineman in the NFL, or a defender pulling a jersey of a guard as the latter runs around a pick, or a catcher framing an outside pitch. I say that as long as you are not trying to hurt someone and your transgression is on the field of play then it is part of the game and up to the officials to penalize you for it.



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