THE STAIN REMAINS
New words flashed upon an oversized screen.
Moving forward.
Back to baseball.
Humility.
If only it was that simple for the battered Astros.
Tuesday, the 2020 version of Houston’s professional baseball franchise tried to move everything forward. General manager James Click was officially introduced as Jeff Luhnow’s replacement. When Jim Crane sat alone at a table, the Astros’ owner was soon joined by new manager Dusty Baker and Click. A new slogan, bobbleheads and fan-friendly promotional items were introduced inside a glitzy dining room normally reserved for premium ticket holders. And on a screen that normally projects live broadcasts of Astros games, the most-loathed team in contemporary sports unveiled “For the H.”
“We play for the ‘H’ on our caps. For the legacy we will build together,” said a deepvoiced narrator, as grainy images of George Springer, Jose Altuve and Justin Verlander filled the screen.
Ex-manager A.J. Hinch, Luhnow
and a sport-changing signstealing scandal were never mentioned during the media event. And while a team representative joked that the Astros had recently given reporters a lot to write about, the real message was that an offseason of chaos was locked in the past and the annual newness of spring training was near.
Three days later, moving it forward slammed into another brick wall.
Hinch gave a nationally televised one-on-one interview to MLB Network, conducting a one-man public relations repair effort while his former team prepared for an extended stay in West Palm Beach, Fla. He kept accepting all the blame, in general, and never said the best team in Astros history didn’t cheat.
“We did it to ourselves,”
Hinch said.
Yet when Hinch was given the opportunity to completely deny that the 2019 Astros wore electronic buzzers at the plate, he talked around the lingering theory and didn’t deny anything.
While Hinch somewhat opened up on TVs across the country, the real news was being made the old-fashioned way.
The Wall Street Journal issued a detailed report that, in some ways, was even more damning than a Jan. 13 report from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred that unofficially placed an asterisk next to the only World Series championship in Astros history.
Luhnow’s name was everywhere. The Astros’ front office was directly linked to a signstealing algorithm and the origins of the worst scandal in MLB since the steroid era. And with terms such as “Codebreaker” and “dark arts” attached to the Astros’ golden era, we were yet again reminded that what we were watching between the lines in recent years inside a roaring Minute Maid Park wasn’t what was really happening.
“Manfred wrote in his letter (to Luhnow) that ‘there is more than sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that you knew — and overwhelming evidence that you should have known — that the Astros maintained a sign-stealing program that violated MLB’s rules,’ ” the Journal reported.
At least Hinch took to the airwaves and answered questions.
Alex Bregman kept passing during FanFest, Altuve kept his focus on 2020, and Verlander joked about the Astros being technologically and analytically advanced when he accepted his 2019 American League Cy Young award. The rest of the Astros’ relevant players have been MIA for almost a month, even though Manfred made it clear that their actions directly led to Hinch and Luhnow being suspended from MLB for a full season.
It’s clearer than ever that the Crane-era Astros will never be the same. And that Manfred should have insisted on a much more thorough internal cleansing of Minute Maid Park, instead of a couple public sacrifices that ultimately allowed the Astros’ overall system to remain in place.
This isn’t going away anytime soon.
The Astros’ first spring training game is against the 2019 World Series champion Washington Nationals, who are nextdoor neighbors in West Palm
Beach. The first regular-season road trip starts at Oakland, which just happens to be Mike Fiers’ team. The All-Star Game will be played inside Dodger Stadium, which houses the team the Astros beat in the ’17 World Series. And every time the Astros try to move the past forward — hiring Baker, announcing Click, promoting “For the H” — something new is said or reported, and the chaos cycle starts again.
This week should be devoted to the warm Florida sun and the buzz of a new beginning.
Bregman confidently striding into the clubhouse. Verlander warming up on a side mound. Altuve’s first cracks in the cage. Baker charming the cameras and Click overseeing it all.
The simple sounds and rejuvenating joy of baseball.
This will be the week after Hinch’s words were broadcast nationwide and the “dark arts” of “Codebreaker” were revealed.
The new Astros can’t leave the old Astros* behind.
Although it’s trying to wipe the slate clean, the franchise can’t escape a tarnished past