I like Mark Maguire. I'm a Dodger fan, and have met the guy working as a hitting coach. Nice dude.
Brother, I keep reading your posts where you seem to say, yeah you get the concept of unfair advantages, then say....but you're not taking away anything from title gained in this way. This is quite confusing to me bro. I'm either reading what you're saying wrong or you are actually saying you accept achievements "won" when the playing field was rigged because....it's in the record book so there.
Again, using the Mark Maguire analogy, he has hit home runs while on the juice. You're ok with looking at the baseball almanac and pointing out, well it's right there in print, see, he was one of the greatest homerun hitters? Likewise, you're ok with looking at the GP almanac and say, yeah, I know VR (or maybe you don't actually believe) won on juiced tires, but you're ok with it because...he "won"?
Edit: oh, just read your other post, so I see that McGuire's juicing is debatable, ok. Seems like the debatable part is the technical legality of it. So if it's "legal" you're ok with it. Am I understanding you right? So if unfair advantages are allowed by the 'rules', that is, are "legal" it's ok, the titles won this way are acceptable?
It reminds me of the Roman Emporer who took a liking to battling gladiators. He was "undefeated". Imagine that.
I was corrected on Mark by LPS. I forgot he finally came clean and said he used steroids, so the analogy doesn't hold water any longer. (Might have blocked it out due to the only reason I watch baseball today is Mark and Sosa.)
My best comparison was The King Richard Petty and the Super Bird. What I was trying to say is in every sport, specially motor sports, there have be changes to rules, improvements to racing technologies and and racing equipment, and the top drivers have always been the first to take advantage of those advancement. That is why it is always hard to knock the top guys and top teams off the top once they are there. All Rossi and his team did was play the game, by the rules, with in the rules at the time, and played it better than any other team.
Therefore, I can't dismiss all of Rossi's 'ships and success away from him any more than I can Ago's (because his MV Agusta was far superior to any other bike on the track at that time), King Richards, Hamilton's, or Michael's (there has been some post about MS cheating and dirty, I don't, maybe so) and Joey Dunlap, (didn't he use a newer 1000cc bike a couple years prior to everyone else? Don't hold me to that one.) .
The tire stuff, I am not sure about. I have googled this a couple times and have yet to find any reliable media or sports outlet that had any articles covering this. I can find forum post, but we know how reliable those are. Therefore, I don't weight that as a make or break. From my understanding, the tire .... then was a mess, but it didn't start then. Same tire shell game was going to prior to Rossi. So, Rossi didn't created the tire shenanigans, he just went along with it, just like Stoner would have if he had the opportunity.
I guess to sum it all up.. Hate the game, not the player.
Like I have said.. Don't think Rossi is the super star some do, but I do think he had a great career that all but a handful of rides would slap their sister to have the same career. I think some have their hate blinders on and refuse to give credit where credit is do.
Example, as a Steelers fan, I hate Brady more than global warming, but at the end of the day, the SOB, is probably the best QB to play the game. (The .... Suck)
