And committing a murder was never really in the qualifications list of being a made guy, I mean it was, but you could also get a pass and your button if you were simply involved in a hit, and contributed in some way other than pulling the trigger. Just look at Al D'Arco.
That's a very good point. But there have been made guys who didn't even take part in the planning of a hit. There's a youngish guy in New York right now who is absolutely revered by some people on these boards for being "old school," with "ties to Sicily," and yada yada yada. And I know for an absolute fact that he never even drove a crash car on a hit. And that's not a criticism because this is actually one of the street guys who I respect, and they're few and far between these days.
Now granted, things are different today. If you do the simple math, you'll find that there just haven't been enough hits in recent years to justify making every guy who got his button since the '90s (and that's factoring in five or so guys involved in each hit, which is stretching things a bit). But even in the old days, there were more than a handful of big money guys who got made for their earning potential and nothing more.
