As Chris Connolly found out , cheat is unimaginative , bestial , and plain crass . Underhandedness , on the under helping hand , requires a sealed mustache - twirling dash — a boldness that becharm us , no matter what the rulebooks say ! Here ’s to 7 of the Greatest Underhanded Sports Tacticians of All - sentence .
1. The Real McCoy: Giving New Meaning to Hitting Below the Belt
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Seeking to psych out contender in the days result up to freehanded competitiveness , Hall of Fame boxer Charles " Kid " McCoy oft feigned sickness or spread rumors of an injury . Then , when the round came around , McCoy would show up in utter form . ( This purportedly prompted reporters to wonder whether they ’d be seeing " the veridical McCoy " in the annulus . ) But McCoy ’s lowest reverse ? In 1893 , when he fight down a deaf deaf-mute . Toward the end of the fourth round of golf , McCoy simply dropped his gloves and walked back to his quoin as though the Alexander Bell had sounded . When the deaf attack aircraft plow to do the same , McCoy ran over and knocked him out .
2. Red Auerbach: The Host From Hell
Boston Public Library , Flickr // CC BYNC - ND-2.0
Coach Arnold " Red " Auerbach , the cigar - chomping originator behind the great Boston Celtics team of the 1950s and sixties , was n’t one to countenance any advantage go unused . Auerbach knew his home stadium inside and out and keep in line it to create one of the smashing rest home court advantages in the history of sportswoman . To foster a feeling of estrangement among opposing player , he would assign chaffer team a different locker room in the Boston Garden each time they came to town . To foster a tone of nausea , he reportedly made certain at least one stool in the visitant ’s quarters was stopped up and overflowing . And finally , to foster a feeling of " it ’s so hot I ’m gon na die , " he forge to have the construction ’s boilers stoked and steaming right before tip off and again at halftime .
3. The Spanish Paralympic Basketball Team: Playing Dumb
The grand hero of sport ethic eradication have to be the penis of the 2000 Spanish Paralympic basketball squad . How low could they go ? After the squad snagged a gold medallion , it was revealed that 10 of the 12 players had never been tested , and were , in fact , not mentally challenged .
4. Eddie Stanky and The Stanky Maneuver
One of the all - time greats at dig into the point of accumulation of sports rulebooks was second baseman Eddie " The Brat" Stanky . The honorable grounds of Stanky ’s originative rule rendition came in 1950 , when baseball game commissioner Ford Frick had to forbid Stanky from using what had become known as the " Stanky Maneuver,“ a dubious defensive tactics in which he took vantage of his post behind the pitcher by " jumping up and down while waving wildly in an attempt to distract defend batters . “
5. Jason Grimsley and The Ol' Bat-and-Switch
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When mistrust arose that Cleveland Indians batsman Albert Belle had been corking his bat , it made for a cloak - and - sticker spy - fest . Tipped off about Belle ’s bat during a 1994 game against the White Sox , arbiter confiscated it and took it to a storage locker room for later investigating . Knowing Belle ’s bat was doctored , and not desire to fall behind their best offensive player to a hanging , the Indians dispatched pitcher Jason Grimsley to sneak into the elbow room and switch out the squash racquet for a legal mannikin . Grimsley climbed through about 10 feet of duct and a false ceiling to pull the permutation . The plan might have work , if only he had n’t replaced it with an autographed Paul Sorrento manakin . The caper was quickly notice , and Belle before long found himself suspend .
6. Donald Crowhurst and Some Not-So-Smooth Sailing
When 36 - class - erstwhile Donald Crowhurst enroll the British Sunday Times Golden Globe orotund - the - Earth racing yacht slipstream in 1968 , all he had going for him were an experimental plyboard sailing boat , a lilliputian soaring experience , and a gift for underhanded extemporization .
Crowhurst set out with good intentions , but soon encountered problem with his ship . Dubious about his workmanship ’s chances in the savage Southern Ocean near Antarctica , Crowhurst just detoured across the Atlantic and holed up off the coast of South America at a position much far along the course . As he waited for his rival to take hold of up , Crowhurst sent out phony receiving set reports claiming he was in second place . The scheme come to a tragical end , however , when he learned that Nigel Tetley , another automobile driver , had capsized in an all - out effort to entrance him , or , at least , his reported place . whelm with remorse , Crowhurst rub out a confession , step off the side of his vessel , and committed suicide by drowning . We did n’t let in this account to depress you ; we include it so that you could n’t accuse us of plunk for cheat .
7. Gene Bossard and the Field of Streams
For groundkeeper Gene Bossard , bring the Chicago White Sox an underhanded hand was the syndicate business organisation . Gene manage the turf at Comiskey Park from 1940 to 1983 , and when he mistreat down , his son Roger take over operations . Together , the Bossards were experience for doctoring and dampening the diamond to give the Sox a straight household field advantage . In fact , fight down teams take to calling the baseball diamond " Bossard ’s Swamp,“ because Gene maintain it watered down to benefit the Sox ’s sinkerball pitchers and to slow opposing baserunners . Bossard ’s most infamous caper , however , seems to be devise the " frozen baseball . “ Perhaps Roger Bossard explain the phenomenon best : " In the bowel of the previous stadium my dad had an erstwhile way where the humidifier was incessantly going . By leave the ball in that elbow room for 10 to 14 daylight , they became a quarter- to a half - Panthera uncia heavy . “ The Sox manager during the frozen lump era in the tardy sixties ? Number 4 on this list , Eddie Stanky .
NOTE : This piece is excerpt from Chris Connolly ’s marvellous 10 Underhanded Sports Tactics piece from Vol . 5 , Issue 5 ( usable at the mental_floss memory board , here ) .
