"I think most everyone here has been open in saying that we hold players to a higher standard than MLB has chosen..."
Everyone here, I take it, is the sum of posters on this board, perhaps best measured by the number of members who have taken the time to post to this thread.
However, that "we" is miniscule to the fans who have been flooding into stadiums, at considerable out of pocket expense each trip, or the millions more who have had eyeballs glued to sets as the final leg of the drama unfolded. Those fans want to be part of history in the making; and, at the bottom line, they suspend all disbelief for a share of those "moments." That has always been a common denominator among baseball fans, going back to Hank Greenberg's and Jimmie Foxx's assaults on Ruth's 60 HR record; the .400 watch in 1941 with Ted Williams, and again with TSW in 1957.
It was the daily vigil seeing how far DiMaggio would go with hit hit streak and the M&M HR race in the early '60s in NYC. It was a rather bulky looking Clemens racking up #300.
Player personality, reputation with the fans and media, all fade into oblivion, as do their "supplement" habits, as with McGwire-Sosa and their dueling tape measures a few years back
Fans are fickle; but fans LOVE to see records fall, and to be part of it.
As I said, kflo made my case for me; and whatever we post here, the records have been set and were "in the clear" just as kflo wrote ... and with no pun intended within the quotes.
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