I honestly didn't think Cheater (Drug User) Makes HOF and Cheater (Plagiarist) Makes Dean's List was that much of a stretch but I guess not.

Sigh. To the first point: That wasn't me "dismissing" gradations of cheating. That was me genuinely confused about whether terriblehuman was positing that drugs are cheating (which the HOFers, according to him, consider as cheating but don't care) or not (which he says is Lebatard's point). That's why I posed the…

Ha! On the analogy part or the all drug users should be in the Hall part?

Your trolling powers are strong my son, but point me to where I said that.

No, it's called nuance. I give up ...

Dude, it's cheating. A different kind of cheating, that's how analogies work, but still cheating. It's not a big reach.

Right, because taking steroids is the same thing as having Vaseline on the inside of your cap or sharpening your cleats. Newsflash: steroids are scary. They literally kill you.

Alright, I'll concede the point there but then we're getting into degrees of performance enhancing. Caffeine is performance enhancing if the dosage is high enough but if Barry Bonds was having 40 cups a day instead of taking steroids even I'd be fine with him going to the HOF. But he wasn't, he and others were taking…

Ha ha! I'm totally not an asshole! I hate to be engaging in flame wars with everyone here because I love the commentariat and I'd much rather be laughing at everyone's GIFs and dick jokes.

Okay, you raise an interesting point here and I had given it some thought. What if a guy like Ripken - years after the fact, years after he gets inducted - gets found out to have been a doper. I'd throw him out but I would see people's POV if what's done is done and he should be left in. I don't know what provision,…

We're getting WAY off the original topic here but does he actually say that in the book? Jesus, dude, there's a million reasons why somebody would take drugs, maybe he needed them to sleep because all the hate mail and death threats were driving him insane.

And once you start excluding one drug taker ...

Ah, the ole' 'Player X was a dirty scoundrel and is in the HOF so ALL dirty scoundrels should be in' argument. Right, because society and standards don't ever evolve.

Okay, cool, I get where you're coming from, but people here seem to be taking an unusually (and unnecessarily) precise temperature with regards to the analogy and with regards to drug use/HOF eligibility. Or maybe I'm taking a simplistic view, which is: cheating is cheating. If you took drugs, you cheated, you don't…

Yikes, so now we're suggesting certain kinds of cheating can't be compared with others and that to do so constitutes a weak analogy?

Lebatard isn't talking about cheating ... HOFers don't care about cheating per se

Try reading it again. The analogy is not hard to understand. It's about to what extent cheaters should be rewarded.

Many of the gatekeeper voters denying Barry Bonds Hall Of Fame entry would have they themselves taken a magical, healing, not-tested-for-in-their-workplace elixir if it made them better at their jobs, especially if lesser talents were getting the glory and money.

Can you guys PLEASE stop putting GIFs in the Recently Recommended column, it is FUCKING impossible to read a story with something playing on a loop beside it.

A few days before the game ... I got in a drunken brawl and sliced up my hand on a tooth ...