Just ask Jonathan Agnew, the BBC cricket correspondent who courted controversy last week by insinuating Australia had sullied the memory of Phillip Hughes, their late team-mate, by continuing their aggressive approach during the fractious Test series against India.
Except unlike those who sullied baseball's statistical pool, there is little doubt over the authenticity of Ichiro Suzuki's achievement: 4,000 professional hits over a 21-year career.
He reclaimed not only the story of his life, but a sense of artistic purpose, and not incidentally a book title that had been for too long sullied by history's most vile tyrant.
The charge of "corruption" and sullied innocence sits more easily when the "victim" looks like Cyrus.
But when it came to 2005, Blair's reputation was so sullied by Iraq that he had to bring Brown in from the cold to rescue the campaign.
Tracey McDermott, the FCA's director of enforcement and financial crime, said: "A firm's lack of controls and a trader's disregard for a customer's interests have allowed the financial services industry's reputation to be sullied again.
MO'R I accept your charges about the likes of Terry Richardson – there are vile operators in any industry but it doesn't mean the whole of that world should be sullied by them.
"They don't want that record sullied.
Its finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, is not satisfied that the ECB's hallowed independence over monetary policy can avoid becoming sullied by the murky business of delving into banks.
It has to counter a powerful legend that, since the second world war, its army has been a peacekeeping operation not a fighting one, and that Afghanistan has sullied this noble ideal.Similarly, in Germany, where even today there is squeamishness about seeing the country's soldiers going into action, Afghanistan is a huge political issue.
Mr Livingstone has been around a long time, and allegations of wrongdoing have sullied what charms he still has.Mr Johnson is closer to David Cameron, the Tory leader, who backed his run for the party's nomination from the start, than Mr Livingstone is to Mr Brown, whose dislike for the mayor is famous.
