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Cobb participated in a Detroit-Cleveland fix during the last week of the 1919 season, on Sept. 25, immediately before the Black Sox scandal. Cobb later conceded he was among the four players in on the fix, but refused to ackowledge the accusation he had agreed to bet $2,000 on the game. The evidence indicated otherwise, that Cobb was fudging.

The other players involved in the conspiracy were pitcher Dutch Leonard, Cobb`s Detroit teammate, and playing manager Tris Speaker and pitcher Smoky Joe Wood of Cleveland. There was no public knowledge of the fix until 1926, when letters written by Cobb and Wood were sold by Leonard to American League President Ban Johnson.

As fixes go (there were more than a dozen similar connivances in the early 1900s), it wasn`t much. At stake was third place. The White Sox had already won the pennant, and Cleveland had clinched second, with the Tigers and the Yankees battling for third. Although figures are not available, a third-place share was probably worth about $500 per player.

The Cleveland players, for whatever reasons, wanted Detroit, not New York, to finish third. And so the plot was hatched: The Indians would lose to the Tigers. Detroit won 9-5, but justice prevailed. The Yankees finished third, a half-game ahead of the Tigers.

Charles Alexander, in his exhaustive biography of Cobb, writes:

``Then, said Leonard, the four agreed that they might as well bet some money on the game. Cobb was to put up $2,000, Leonard $1,500 and Speaker and Wood $1,000 each. Cobb suggested a park attendant named Fred West would be a good man to place the bets. But because Detroit was a 10-7 favorite and because the local bookmakers were unwilling to handle so much money, West only managed to get down $600 against the bookmakers` $420 for three betting partners.``

So, like the steroid guys, it appears that we only take umbrage with those WHO GOT CAUGHT.