King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Baseball's big cheater confesses! Plus: Barry Bonds.
Read more: Drugs, Sports, Baseball, Barry Bonds, Bud Selig, Major League Baseball, Steroids, King Kaufman, Sports Daily, MLB
May 30, 2007 | Cornered by a hounding media, the man who cheated baseball has finally come clean.
All the speculation, it turns out, has been accurate. The denials have finally stopped. The cheater, at long last, has admitted his dirty deed.
Cincinnati Reds outfielder Norris Hopper said Tuesday that he snuck the ball into Ryan Freel's glove Monday as Freel lay unconscious on the warning track following their collision chasing a Humberto Cota line drive.
Who did you think I was talking about?
Cota, his fellow Pittsburgh Pirates and scattered typists had speculated that Freel hadn't caught the ball, and that Hopper had slipped it into Freel's glove as he knelt to check on his fallen mate.
Umpire Adam Dowdy -- in his first big-league game -- had raced out from second base, seen the ball in Freel's glove and called Cota out. Cota, a catcher, bemoaned his once-in-a-lifetime chance at an inside-the-park home run after the Reds, leading 1-0 in the third inning at the time of the catch, went on to a 4-0 win. Freel landed on the 15-day disabled list with minor head and neck injuries.
Hopper denied the charges for a day, but Hal McCoy reports in Wednesday's Dayton Daily News that he copped to his cheat Tuesday.
The incident happened in a game between the Reds and Pirates, so it hardly became an international incident. Same collision happens in a Yankees-Red Sox game and we'd still be in for two more days of round-the-clock coverage on CNN, never mind ESPN.
But I'm sure an angry media will sweep into action now that a clear case of cheating has been exposed. The very integrity of the game is at stake, after all, and we keep hearing how the integrity of the game is paramount.
At least sometimes it is.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Legitimacy, context and Barry Bonds, continued [PERMALINK]
Hey, speaking of Barry Bonds -- What? Who was? -- several readers wrote in to call me on a point I made week before last about Babe Ruth getting to hit in a home park, Yankee Stadium, whose dimensions were created to facilitate his home runs.
They were right, and I owe you an apology.