FIERY FEUD CONTINUES
The Athletics and Astros will take battle to next level in the ALDS series in Los Angeles
A’s vs. Astros? Nah, it’s more complicated than that. Emotions run way too deep to give this week’s contentious American League Division Series such a simplistic billing.
How about The Whistleblowers vs. The Garbage Can Kids? Or The Redemption Rumble? Whatever you want to call it, get ready for baseball’s version of a WWE SmackDown when the bitter rivals take their respective corners Monday at Dodger Stadium.
This time, despite what happened at the Coliseum in August, any battle is likely to be waged with just words. The consequences of another bench-clearing brawl between the adversaries are too pricey.
But the scars from the Astros’ sophisticated sign- stealing scheme, the one that rocked baseball and stained Houston’s 2017 World Series title with an asterisk, will still be on full display throughout the best- of-5 series.
We’ve already been treated to a razortongued undercard to the first postseason meeting between the enemies from the AL West, one we’ll refer to as The Saucy Aussie vs. The Sassy Shortstop.
“Obviously, as a vindictive kind of thing, we want to take out the Astros,” said A’s closer Liam Hendriks, who nailed down Oakland’s series clincher over the Chicago
White Sox to set up the showdown. “I think there’s a little bit of us wanting to make sure they know what they’ve done.”
Houston’s Carlos Correa, though, doesn’t want to hear it from Hendriks or anyone else. As far as he’s concerned, his team’s detractors can stick it.
“I know a lot of people are mad. I know a lot of people don’t want to see us here,” the All-Star shortstop said after Houston swept the Twins in the first round Wednesday. “But what are they going to say now?”
Whoever runs the Astros’ social media account amplified Correa’s words, thumbing his or her nose at the team’s attackers with an equally tone-deaf boast on Twitter.
“Stay mad, we’ll stay winning,” the tweet read.
Now that’s the kind of remorseless response that’s made it easy for fans across the country to choose a side in this rivalry (or any game involving the Astros, actually).
On one side sits the Astros, orchestrators of the sport’s most infamous team scandal in more than 100 years. Unlike the 1919 “Black Sox,” the Astros essentially bet on themselves, doubling down on their dominance by illegally using video cameras to see catchers’ signals, and then utilizing a crude system of banging on garbage cans to alert their batters what pitch was coming.
And they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for their meddling ex-teammate, A’s pitcher Mike Fiers, who’ll be on the other side of the field with teammates just as revengeminded as the Astros.
After receiving years of back-channel accusations about Houston from teams, including a few from the A’s, MLB’s tipping point came last winter when Fiers went public with the detailed account he gave baseball officials of the Astros’ cheating he witnessed while with them from 2015-17.
Fiers, who bit his tongue while picking up a World Series ring in 2017, said he couldn’t sit by any longer and watch the Astros cheat the system.
“I just want the game to be cleaned up a little bit because there are guys who are losing their jobs because they’re going in there not knowing,” Fiers told The Athletic last November about playing at Houston’s Minute Maid Park. “Young guys getting hit around in the first couple of innings starting a game, and then they get sent down. It’s (B.S.) on that end. It’s ruining jobs for younger guys. The guys who know are more prepared. But most people don’t. That’s why I told my team.
“That’s not playing the game the right way. They were advanced and willing to go above and beyond to win.”
They do call Houston “The City With No Limits” for a reason, right?
Yet there’s apparently no limit to how dismissive first-year Astros manager Dusty Baker can be of the A’s pitcher, who has yet to face Houston this season.
“Nobody has mentioned his name,” Baker told reporters via a video con
ference Friday. “I haven’t heard Mike Fiers’ name all year until you just said it right now, you know what I mean? It’s like he’s not even present.”
Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr., who is scheduled to face the A’s in Los Angeles, told The Athletic otherwise. He hinted he and his teammates won’t soon forget what Fiers did.
“By the way, there was only one snitch,” he said.
The fallout from Fiers’ revelations was not only harsh, it was widespread. Fiers’ stories helped convince baseball commissioner Rob Mandred to hand down severe penalties to the Astros. Manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were both suspended for a year and then immediately fired by Houston. Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who had helped devise the sign-stealing operation while in Houston, was also fired. Former Astro Carlos Beltran was also terminated before he could manage his first game with the Mets.
The only Astros who escaped punished by MLB or team owner Jim Crane were the players themselves. They were granted immunity in exchange for cooperating with the investigation into their own cheating.
A’s pitcher Sean Manaea, normally one of the more easy-going players in the game, was angry with that kind of justice.
“Honestly, it’s (B.S.). They haven’t owned up to any of their actions,” Manaea told reporters in July. “The way they’ve handled things is not right. Nothing’s happened to them and they’re just skating on by. They’re kind of just going about their business, which to me isn’t right. They’ve cheated. They’ve cheated the game. They’ve cheated us as players.”
That chain of events in Houston also didn’t sit well with many throughout the game, particularly Joe Kelly, a pitcher for the Dodgers, who lost in the 2017 playoffs to the Astros as a member of the Red Sox.
“The people who took the fall for what happened is nonsense,” Kelly said during a podcast hosted this summer by then-teammate Ross Stripling. “When you take someone’s livelihood . . . to save your own ass, that’s what I don’t like.
“Cheating? They cheated. Everyone knows they’re cheaters. They know they’re cheaters. It’s over. When you taint someone’s name to save your own name, this is one of the worst things that you could probably do. That really friggin’ bugs me. I think
I’ll be irritated forever.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising Kelly tried taking matters into his own hands on Aug. 2 when he threw two pitches near the heads of Houston’s Alex Bregman and Correa. Kelly was suspended five games for his actions that nearly led to an ugly brawl.
A week later, it was the A’s turn to personally express some frustration with the Astros. A’s outfielder Ramon Laureano, who was originally drafted by the Astros, was hit by pitches three times in a series against Houston at the Coliseum, including twice in an Aug. 9 game. The last plunking led to a bench-clearing scuffle when Laureano charged the Astros dugout after a shouting match with coach Alex Cintron.
The ensuing scrum resulted in multiple suspensions, including Laureano (four games) and a deeper penalty for Cintron (20 games), who instigated the trouble. However, Laureano was kicking himself afterward for even bothering to pay attention to the Astros coach.
“I regret charging him because he’s a loser,” Laureano said.
That sort of contempt was nothing new for the Astros, who’ve faced scrutiny at pretty much every stop during their bumpiest season in years. Coincidental or not, many point out Houston’s three-year reign in the AL West was ended by the A’s once the Astros’ sign-stealing ploys were foiled. Houston’s 29-31 finish also marked the first time in six years they’ve finished below .500.
Of course, you won’t find many sympathizers outside of Houston. But you will find plenty of folks who believe the Astros haven’t faced enough backlash. In an ironic twist, the coronavirus has shielded the Astros from feeling much more pain.
Because fans haven’t been permitted to attend games and personally express their anger with the Astros, the anti-Houston crowd has had to get creative to deliver their vitriol.
The first time the Astros visited Oakland this year, an intrepid group of A’s fans started a GoFundMe account and raised enough money to have a plane deliver a message. For two hours, the plane towed a sign back and forth over the Coliseum reading, “Houston Asterisks.”
The Astros’ visits to Oakland this year have also brought out the creativeness in the outfield signage. The most memorable has been the one that read, “Hey Astros. Steal THIS sign.”
Don’t think just because the A’sAstros series will be held in Los Angeles that there’s going to be much neutrality among the folks assembling outside the stadium. When the Astros visited Chavez Ravine to face the Dodgers this year a horde of fans holding up disparaging signs lined up to greet them.
“I think it was probably a ‘ gulp’ type of moment when you see people standing outside the entrance with all the signs as their bus drove by,” Astros radio analyst Steve Sparks told The New York Times Friday. “I imagine they’ll experience that again, and that’s tough, especially when you see kids out there doing that, to see that over and over.
“I don’t think anybody’s feeling sorry for them, but they just get beat down all the time.”