Probe could lead to historic penalties
Investigators trying to determine if Cardinals are guilty of hacking Astros’ computers
WASHINGTON — No team in the history of American pro sports has ever been in as much trouble — a legal, ethical and disciplinary nightmare — as the St. Louis Cardinals are now if an FBI and Department of Justice investigation ultimately proves that members of their front office hacked the computer network of the Astros to steal ... everything.
Government investigators are probing the Cards to see if their employees hacked into the Astros’ main proprietary baseball brain — called Ground Control — which was developed by former St. Louis front-office star, and now Houston general manager, Jeff Luhnow.
If proven true, this could in theory lead to jail sentences for the guilty as well as possible lifetime bans from baseball on “integrity of the game” grounds.
Neither MLB, nor any other major American sport, has a precedent for punishments in such a case because no team has ever attempted such wholesale club-versus-club spying. But, depending on many variables — especially who knew and who (if anyone) authorized such theft — MLB might need to deliver the harshest penalties against any team in the game’s history.
For more than a century, baseball has been known for its relatively minor forms of rule-bending or cheating-with-a-wink, such as spitballs and corked bats.
In perhaps the most egregious example of true team-wide cheating, the 1951 New York Giants had a sign-stealer with binoculars positioned in their centre field scoreboard in the Polo Grounds to relay the pitch to their hitter at the plate.
Even that was chicken feed compared to what the Cardinals may face.
What would be inside Ground Control that could be of value to a competitor? Probably every shred of information the Houston franchise possesses on virtually anything of vital importance to its operation. You name it: proprietary evaluations of current MLB players as well as reports on amateur players; Moneyball-type analysis of how every aspect of the game should be played; how statistics should be evaluated as well as the Astros’ internal discussions of potential trades or free agent signings.