Why does sport describe taking the easy way out as cherry picking?

Anonymous

Doesn't really mean that something is easy, it means being selective and only choosing the best bit of something to suit your purposes like selfishly picking the biggest and best from a bowl of cherries or whatever. Nothing to do with fruit picking - that would be picking low-hanging fruit.

Quentin

This means picking the cherry off the top of a cake and eating it. Leaving the rest of the cake. Because you only want the cherry.

Henry

It means cherry picking data at a choice, no doubt with extreme bias.