With Astros’ tainted history, can’t just say ‘Out, damned spot’
HOUSTON — Friends, baseball fans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury the Astros, not to praise them.
The evil that they did in 2017 lives after them.
The good is better off not discussed. So let it be with Altuve, Bregman, Correa and Gurriel.
They accepted illegal signs in 2017; they were not honorable men.
No need, therefore, to point out what elite players they remain in 2021. Or to delineate that the best two-way infields in the majors will both be playing in the World
Series beginning Tuesday, and one of them is composed of Jose Al- tuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and Yuri Gurriel.
The Astros cheated in 2017 and none of the players faced sanctions and they can never be forgiven for cheating and getting away with it; at least getting away with no suspensions even if their reputations forever carry this stain.
So who cares that Gurriel won the batting title this season, Correa may have had his best year yet and Altuve keeps piling huge October hits onto his résumé; all of this done without indicators of what pitch is coming or buzzers under uniforms.
And let us not even acknowledge that pretty much every 2021 Astro outside of that golden infield had nothing at all to do with 2017; even if they were booed on the road this year as if their favorite musical instrument was a banged garbage can.
Kyle Tucker came in the draft, Michael Brantley via free agency and Yordan Alvarez through a steal of a trade with — of all teams — the Dodgers.
That is a fully functioning Death Star using every avenue to nab the kind of lefty hitters that I know from talking to the Yankees are so difficult to find. Yet here they are in one place; all arriving as difference-makers after 2017.
But 2017 happened and so every move made by that front office should be looked at as part of a poisoned process and every current Astro pinned with guilt by association. So the hell with those lefty bats and the fact that the Astros struck out less than any team again this year with, we must assume, no advanced word of what a pitcher was about to deliver.
And who cares that the organization has kept producing such reams of talent that it could trade a starting-level center fielder (Myles Straw) to Cleveland and a startinglevel infielder (Abraham Toro) to Seattle to add Phil Maton and Kendall Graveman to address the main area of need, the bullpen.
But, you know 2017, so forget that those trades were made by an untainted front office led by James Click, not Jeff Luhnow, and orchestrated daily by an untainted manager, Dusty Baker, not A.J. Hinch. Forget even that Baker might be the easiest person in the sport for whom to root.
Remember only 2017 and knowing what pitches were coming and how unfair that was, and never forgive, never forget.
Even if more 2017 Astros pitchers will be working for the Braves in this World Series. Charlie Morton, who closed out the ’17 title, will start this opener for Atlanta.
Lance McCullers and Justin Verlander will be injured bystanders. Dallas Keuchel and all the key relievers are long gone. Zack Greinke, who did not arrive until 2019, is still wearing Zack Greinke’s uniform, but not pitching at all like Zack Greinke.
Yet, the Astros are benefitting from more great scouting and development of Latin American pitching than any club in the sport with Luis Garcia, Cristian Javier, Jose Urquidy and Game 1 starter Framber Valdez.
But to cite this would mean lauding a well-run organization that has withstood the humiliation and penalties handed out for its bad behavior — and it was reprehensible behavior.
It would be to appreciate that we have no idea what would have happened in 2017 without the cheating. But we know what has occurred in 2019 and ’20 after the whistle was blown — the Astros made it to their fourth and fifth straight ALCS and are back in their third World Series in five years.
It would mean seeing shades of gray in the black and white. And that is not to be done.
After all, I didn’t come to praise the Astros.