Originally Posted by
notin
The mantra was "Doctored baseballs = fine. Corked bats = cheating." The guy who basically made cheating really bad was bat stuffer Albert Belle, because he was such an intolerable human being. THere were dozens of stories about his bats and the suspicions, and there was the awesome Jason Grimsley story about swapping Belle's confiscated bat. If he had been nicer, it might not have been so frowned upon. (And Grimsley might have learned something about avoiding cheating rather than have his own HGH scandal.)
Of course, then Canseco spilled the beans and we learned what Jayson Stark summed up very well. "Fans don't like cheating if it leads to more home runs."