In an extract from her new book on cheating in
American society, JM Fenster explains how bending the rules has always been a part of baseball
Throughout most millennia, people were too busy avoiding sudden death themselves to worry about which sports teams made the playoffs. In those long years, a good season meant food. “Track” meant food and “field” meant food. Rooting, of course, meant a carrot. Prehistoric peoples didn’t waste words on sports, let alone billions of their hard-earned dollars.
Skipping over ancient times, when amphitheaters teemed with fans of blood sport, a survey of athletic events lands on the gaggles of spectators in more recent centuries who watched local athletes play games on the village green. It was in the late 1700s that horse racing and
boxing led the way into professional sports, producing stars known far and wide. Those sports then veered into the even longer history of cheating, as professionals were readily presumed to fix outcomes. Rich people tugged on the ethics from the other direction by encouraging amateurism. The assumption was that while an amateur might cheat, a professional did so as a matter of course. Not every time or all the time, but the possibility was in the air. A professional would weigh the factors.