Not surprisingly, Gerritt Cole at the center of this seems to have started down this path immediately after joining the Astros.
Not surprisingly, Gerritt Cole at the center of this seems to have started down this path immediately after joining the Astros.
If you won't protect Hank Aaron's home run record, which was a staggering sports accomplishment, you're sure not going to take back a mere World Series trophy. After signaling they were ok with destroying such a large part of the game's history and what the fans enjoy, a Houston was inevitable. Houston ruined one year particularly, if they had contained it properly. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, the steroid era overall and leaving that fraud in the record books, destroyed the game's history across more than half a century of competition. The long lineage in MLB is critical, being able to look back, measure the history, track the numbers, make a big deal of the feats, it's central to the game. Now a lot of it is garbage. How do you fix Bonds being the home run king? Juice the ball and let someone hit 80 home runs? Juice the ball and hope someone hits 800 for a career? It becomes a joke and they trapped themselves in it.
Unless they're going to treat it like it tour de France and keep blood samples from every player for decades, I'm not sure how they can say for certain what records are legit vs not.