Cheaters do prosper, at least in baseball if you’re an Astro

Remorse? Carlos Correa has none.

Not for stealing the 2017 World Series from the Los Angeles Dodgers. Certainly not for celebrating on the field at Dodger Stadium after advancing in the MLB playoffs.

“I know a lot of people are mad. I know a lot of people don’t want to see us here,” the Houston shortstop said. “But what are they going to say now?”

A lot of things, I’m sure, though most are unprintable. Still, the words pale with what they might say if the Astros and Dodgers advance to play in another World Series.

That unpleasant possibility is now closer to reality, with no thanks given to commissioner Rob Manfred. He’s the one who allowed Correa and his fellow cheaters to play this season without so much as a slap on the wrist, and he’s the one who expanded the playoffs so much that a losing team like the Astros somehow found a way to get in.

Thankfully there were no fans at Dodger Stadium the other day to watch the Astros celebrate another playoff triumph. Still, the cardboard cutouts had to be irritated to be glued to their seats as many of the same cheaters who won a World Series at Chavez Ravine hugged and highfived each other after eliminating the Oakland A’s.

If the sight of the hated Astros celebrating on hallowed ground wasn’t bad enough, listening to them talk about it afterward was even worse.

No apologies. No remorse. No acknowledgment about the way the 2017 World Series was won.

“We want to be able to bring another championship to the city of Houston,” Correa said. “We know what it feels like so we want to be able to have that feeling once again. 2017 was such a special year celebrating with the fans in Houston, so the thing that motivates us is to get to feel that again.”

That feeling, of course, is what the Dodgers desperately wanted and would have loved to have. It’s a feeling they almost surely would have had if the Astros were not banging on garbage cans so they knew what pitches were coming.

But now, in the weirdest baseball postseason ever, they had to watch the Astros celebrating in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, there could be even worse scenes ahead.

We’re four wins away from the travesty that could be an Astros-dodgers World Series. Eight wins away from the Astros making a total mockery of a season that was struggling for legitimacy to begin with.

All with a team of cheaters acting like they’ve been wronged instead of the other way around.

To see them winning in the playoffs is distasteful. To see the attitude they’re taking into the American League Championship Series against Tampa Bay is disgusting.

The sad thing is it didn’t need to happen. A commissioner with some backbone — a commissioner who wanted to protect the integrity of the game — would have acted. There would have been suspensions, and they would have been long.

Instead, the message Manfred and MLB are sending is that cheaters do prosper.