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No one really cares if football players do steroids. They tend to die young, anyway. So what? But baseball is different. Baseball is a game of numbers, its history and its easily quantifiable records are inextricably intertwined, coming together as consecrated numerology. Legends are identifiable by their digits: 714 is Babe Ruth; 755, Hank Aaron; 61* is another way of saying Roger Maris; .406 is shorthand for Ted Williams. 56, Joe DiMaggio. And so on.
When you mess with those numbers, you mess with The Game.
