In hindsight, all of us made a terrible mistake in looking upon someone like Gaylord Perry –– a pitcher infamous for loading up his deliveries with what we quaintly call “foreign substances” –– as a sort of a sassy, picaresque figure, who was merely tilting at the windmills of authority. But that view is nonsense. Perry and his ilk did not abuse baseballs, they abused baseball.

So even if it was no more than an illegal puff of air that was willfully, with foresight, removed from the Patriot footballs — with Tom Brady’s direction or mere acquiescence — Brady is guilty of purposely defiling the very artifacts that make the game fair and square. It is not enough to say that everybody cheats a little or, ‘Well, gee, there wasn’t all that much difference in the balls,’ or that people are picking on the poor Patriots.

Games are played by naturally gifted people using authorized equipment. If either is illegally distorted, it’s not just a crime against the game but a wound to the whole essence of sport.