Springer will have to live with stain of 2017 Astros
The Blue Jays’ biggest acquisition of the spring, George Springer, met the media earlier this week for the first time since his introductory news conference at the end of January.
By all indications, Springer is a wonderful young man who, along with a big bat and strong glove in centre field, will also bring great leadership qualities to the clubhouse and be a positive influence on a group of young, uber-talented players. He’ll share his vast post-season experience and help teach the kids how to grind through 162 games and how to win.
These are all great things, of course, but every time Springer talked about his Astros experience, every time he looked back on his trips to the postseason and his outstanding play in October, my mind went back to the same thing.
Springer’s Houston Astros were the biggest bunch of cheaters in pro sports in nearly a century.
In November 2019, former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers blew the whistle to Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic on the most brazen cheating scheme in professional sports since the 1919 Chicago Black Sox.
We don’t need to rehash all the gory details but the upshot is that, at least in 2017, the Astros told their hitters what pitches were coming by stealing signs using a camera they set up in the stands and banging on a garbage can in the tunnel behind the dugout. With that system in place, they cheated their way to a World Series victory, the only one in franchise history.
The truth didn’t come out for a couple of years, and the 2020 season was going to be one where the Astros were met with rabid vitriol from fans whenever they played a game outside of their
home ballpark, but the pandemic took care of that and they have yet to face any kind of music, really.
The fallout for Houston, other than some forfeited draft picks and relatively minimal fines, was the firing of general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch. Bench coach Alex Cora, the manager of the Red Sox when the scandal broke, was fired by Boston, and convenient fall guy Carlos Beltran was fired by the New York Mets just a couple of months after they had hired him as their manager. Hitting coach Dave Hudgens, now the Blue Jays’ bench coach, emerged unscathed.
Hinch, now with the Detroit Tigers, and Cora, warmly welcomed back to skip the Red Sox, are back in the game after serving one-year suspensions. Really, no price has yet been paid.
I’m not suggesting Springer should be the one to pay a price. In fact, he’s been one of the very few members of that team who has actually been appropriately contrite. After Astros teammates Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman read brief, prepared statements at a news conference last February — neither apologized, instead talking about regret, remorse and lessons learned — Springer gave an unscripted answer.
“I feel horrible for our sport, our game, you know, our fans, our city, our organization — just fans in general,” Springer said. “I regret everything.”
Aside from the fact that there’s no apology in there, that’s pretty much the perfect thing to say, so why bring it up again?
Because every time any baseball fan thinks of the Astros, the fact that they cheated their way to a World Series victory is the first thing they should think of. They cheated, and even though they eventually got caught, they got away with it.
Eight members of the 1919 White Sox were banned from the game. For life, they said, but Shoeless Joe Jackson is still ineligible for the Hall of Fame and he’s been dead for almost 70 years.
No players from the 2017 Astros were even suspended, because they traded the truth, or their version of it, for immunity. That’s on commissioner Rob Manfred.
Springer has been asked about the cheating scandal in each of his availabilities with the media as a Jay, and he’s dodged the question both times. The first time, he said, “I believe in myself and I believe in my performances and I believe in the team that was there.”
It should be noted that his performance led to him winning World Series MVP honours. It should also be noted, to be fair, that though 2017 was Springer’s best offensive season to that point in his career, he had better years at the plate in both 2019 and 2020 than he did in 2017. The garbage can helped, how could it not? But he’s not a creation of the cheating.
The second time Springer was asked about the scandal, he answered
“I think this is about the Blue Jays now and I’m here. I’m going to enjoy my time here and I’m going to enjoy my locker room and I’ll go from there.”
There’s really no point in asking about it again.
Nothing is ever going to erase the stain on that Astros’ World Series title, but what could make it better is if we got the real truth.
Tell us you knew it was wrong, but you did it anyway because you thought everybody else was cheating in some way and this was just levelling the playing field. Tell us you thought it was a bad idea, but got carried away and it got to the point where it didn’t seem like that big a deal. Heck, even tell us that you don’t care, that you were doing what you had to do to win, integrity be damned.
When the Astros won their first-round playoff series last season, sweeping the Minnesota Twins, shortstop Carlos Correa defiantly said “What are they going to say now?” An answer that clearly illustrated just how remorseful and regretful he truly was.
We’re going to say that you cheated your way to a World Series victory in 2017, and nothing is ever going to change that.
The Blue Jays hope that Springer will help lead them back to the Fall Classic for the first time in nearly three decades. If he does, and if they should win the whole thing, it will be his first legitimate championship.