I know the Pine Tar Game was before your time, but the part that was so funny about it was that the Yankees knew for weeks, maybe months, that George Brett had too much pine tar on his bat. Billy Martin - he literally said this - was waiting "until Brett does something to hurt us." Brett nails a game-winning (potential) home run, and Martin goes out and cries about it. Brett gets ejected, the home run is disallowed, and the Yankees win.
But then the AL President (whose Dad, coincidentally, had once been a Yankees owner) basically said, "Look, the rule is poorly written and all it means is this, not that it's the same as a corked bat." In fact, the rule only called for the BAT to be removed from the game, no other penalty. So he applied that and the Yankees cried.
Of course, if they were actually concerned about pine tar on the bat, they could have said something earlier. They weren't; they were concerned about getting even with Brett and having a backup plan to win the game on a technicality.
It was the crooked referee in wrestling angle come to life in MLB.
As far as cheating, I'll tell you what an Alabama alum (who shall remain nameless) told me back during the Franchione days: "the top 60 CFB programs in America take whatever liberties they can with the rules and get away with them. And then they report their opponents for doing the same thing, hoping the scholarship reductions from probation slant the playing field in their direction. They're all dirty to the core."
