The 10 most proficient cheaters in the history of sports

While he’s reviled today, at his peak he was appearing in “Dodgeball” and SportsCenter commercials, winning Tour de Frances with ease, and convincing America’s youth to Livestrong. (I saw a guy on the train the other day wearing one of the yellow bracelets and had to check my phone to make sure I was going to my office and not traveling back to 2004.)

If you watched the cycling 30 for 30, “Slaying the Badger,” you know that people within the sport were rolling their eyes at Armstrong and his many endorsements. However, the rest of us were so enamored with the cancer-survivor aspect of his story that we threw logic to the wind. I’m not even sure how he used cancer — a shield, a promotional tool, a public persona — but all I know is he used it as well as he used PEDs, and while extremely fucked up, you can’t say it wasn’t shrewd.

First, we’ll start with Diego Maradona. I’m not going to go too long on him because he sounded like a real POS. During the quarterfinals of the 1986 World Cup against England, Maradona found himself in the box with the keeper as an innocuous ball floated toward him. Watching the replay, it’s hard to imagine how he got the bounce that he did from his head, yet he managed to give the ball enough of a flick for it to dink into the goal.

It’s one of those plays that would be negated by VAR within seconds. It’s Maradona’s reaction and willingness to go along with the bit that makes him savvy. If the refs are going to go with it, roll with it.

Luis Suarez’s handball against Ghana in the 2010 World Cup was definitely less debatable, as he blatantly palmed a header that was headed toward the back of the net. Ghana was awarded a penalty, and Suarez was given a red card and sent off. Yet, you still gotta mark those gimmes. Asamoah Gyan’s attempt hit the crossbar, and Uruguay won in penalties after a scoreless extra period.

The Ghanaians still haven’t forgiven Suarez, and who could blame them? It was cheating, Suarez got caught, and his team still got away with it.

Preying on baseball fans’ obsession with home run records was cruel but effective. The fans were so ignorant/into it that Bud Selig even let it go on for years. It wasn’t until things got really out of hand with guys like Rafael Palmeiro tying career highs in home runs at age 36 that people, specifically baseball writers, began to feel used and stupid.

The rules were so ambiguous during the time that unless you stuck a syringe labeled “steroids” in your left butt cheek, you weren’t cheating. Since the infamous hearings in Washington, featuring muscle-bound batters coming to terms in real time that they’re never going to the Hall of Fame, baseball writers have disowned (to a degree) those associated with the steroid era.

Alex Rodriguez and his non-threatening sweater be damned, those players knew how much the fans love the long ball, and used nostalgia — along with a fuck ton of PEDs — to pull a fast one on America’s Pastime.

The head coach of the New England Patriots has been filming opposing teams’ practices like a 10-year-old with their first phone. Admittedly, I have no idea when children get cell phones nowadays; I just know that for whatever reason they’re obsessed with documenting every detail. For a coach like Bill Belichick, who comes off like the kind of person who can identify tells that you didn’t even know you had at the poker table, the keys are in the details.

And when he has a team’s practice footage, more specifically, their redzone walkthrough, he can pull off upsets like the one he did in the Patriots’ win over the Greatest Show on Turf in Super Bowl XXXVI. Rams quarterback Kurt Warner threw two interceptions — a pick-six, and one in the end zone — that kept the game close enough to steal.

Perhaps the football gods never intended for Mike Martz to win a Super Bowl as a head coach, or Belichick made a deal with satan. Or, maybe, the Pats have an intricate network of cameras at all 30 stadiums and practice facilities around the NFL that Bill and his sons dissect nightly. Whatever it is — blood oath or well-placed nanny cams — it’s sophisticated enough to go on undetected (for the most part).

Had the Astros not been so brazen as to bang on trash cans to signal pitches, they might still be dominating baseball — oh wait. Like Barry Bonds hitting 73 home runs in a season, even when cheating, you still have to be good enough to take advantage of it. The Red Sox won a title in 2018 before MLB got wise, and, honestly, stealing signals might be the only way to beat the Dodgers.

The Yankees, and their fans, can scream about 2017 until people stop listening — which they have — but it still doesn’t negate the truth that New York also used advances in technology to steal signs, and still couldn’t win. The ’Stros have proven that when they commit to something, they’re all in. I have to respect Houston for seeing the opportunity in cameras, iPhones, and technology (buzzers?) to take advantage of a gray area that was begging to be exploited.

The franchise just had another 100-plus win season, and frankly, I find it hard to believe that they’re not still cheating in some way we have yet to discover.

How many horses have to get tagged for designer steroids before Bob Baffert is banned from the sport? 100? 150? 3,000? My favorite part of the Kentucky Derby or any of the three major horse races is when Baffert gives an interview about how hard his team has worked to make this horse a winner.

It’s a delicious line of bullshit that gets regurgitated annually, much like positive tests for his ponies a few days after the win. This entry really should go to horse racing as a whole. The horse racing industry is more or less synonymous with the shadiest aspects of sports — PEDs, gambling, fixing, animal abuse, and so forth. I don’t understand how horse racing is legal with scandals following it around like a dog following a careless child who’s just been given a bag of Cheetos.

I wouldn’t trust Baffert and his weird blue-tinted sunglasses to pour my mint julep, let alone train my pet. Well, unless my pet is a thoroughbred with a shot at the triple crown. Then, by all means, train away.

Foreign substances on baseballs are so commonplace that MLB is debating an approved substance. As a traditionalist, I prefer jalapeño juice, sweat, and rosin, a catcher with a sharp shin guard, a well-placed nail file, mucus, or any other creative way pitchers have been altering baseballs for decades to spider tack.

Of all the crafty vets in sports, pitchers are the craftiest. (Followed closely by seasoned offensive lineman, and NBA guards who can still defend younger players. Ask those who went against John Stockton about all the sharp elbows and jersey tugging.)

Is it even fair to call pitchers cheaters when the rules are unwritten? How are you supposed to consult them? What passage says whether a loogie counts as snot or spit? I don’t want to live in a world where Ed Harris’ tutorial on how to doctor a baseball is moot.

I would rather my kid dominate younger, overmatched competition than give them a participation trophy. So what if Johnny was held back a year and already has a goatee, he’s given up four hits total in his past five starts and has the kind of confidence his father could only dream of.

If you don’t remember Danny Almonte, he was a sensation during the 2001 Little League World series, hitting 79 mph on the gun and leading the Bronx to a third-place finish. At the time, people questioned his age, but I guess the LLWS simply thought the uproar was from parents concerned about their kid taking a two-seamer to the ribs.

Weeks after the series, it was revealed that Almonte was two years too old for the tournament. This was the first time I can remember a team officially being caught running a high schooler out there against sixth and seventh graders. Whoever added Almonte to that roster deserves credit for betting that no one would ask for a birth certificate. People have become increasingly less shameless in general, so kudos to the Bronx manager for seizing the opportunity while society was still relatively innocent.

It’s crazy how much worse Kentucky basketball has gotten since the NCAA stopped caring about players getting paid. Was he a good recruiter, or was he just really good about covering his paper trail? None of his programs received the death penalty, despite Derrick Rose’s family flying private to and from Memphis for games, or the notion that all of those Kentucky guys just really loved Coach Cal.

With NIL deals and other seismic shifts looming for college sports, what we used to call recruiting violations are now recruiting pitches. Everyone has the same advantages that Calipari employed for so long. First, Coach K took his one-and-done corner, and now his bags with large sums of untraceable cash are losing their effect. My god, he might have to *gasp* actually coach his team rather than drop a bunch of five stars on the floor and call it good. Drive and kick isn’t an offense, Cal. And the sooner you figure out a legitimate play style, the sooner Wildcat fans will stop calling for your job.

Congrats on having the greasiest palms, you were a true innovator, but it’s time to find the next loophole.

Cheating at the Olympics seems like it’s been around as long as the Games, and that’s understandable considering how crucial the event is to athletes who only get to shine every four years. There have been plenty of individual perpetrators — Marion Jones, Michael Johnson, etc.

However, no country has made a fool out of the IOC more than mother Russia. They were exposed for basically running a Red Room for their athletes, with Russians looking like yoked-out Black Widows on the uneven bars, and somehow still sending a contingent every two years. I thought for sure we’d get a break from them during the ensuing Games.

Nope. Didn’t happen. They were rebranded as the Russian Olympic Committee, or ROC on the medal leaderboards, and tallied 71 podiums at the 2022 Winter Olympics, third most overall and good for fifth in the final standings. Figure skater Kamila Valieva perhaps best encapsulates how dominant the country can be when employing its win-by-all-means tactics.

The 16-year-old prodigy helped Russia win the team event at the 2022 Games only to test positive for a banned substance. However, she faltered in her individual program, and was seen after crying as her coach simultaneously shunned/yelled at her. The Russians are fucked up on so many levels, but it’s hard to argue with the results.