Resilience betrayed: Astros players must apologize
Just like a flooded house, team that gave us hope after Harvey needs to be mucked out
Walking into Austin’s Book People a few days before Christmas, I noticed stacks of books near the front door that were marked down to less than half the publisher’s price. Among them was “Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Astros and the Resilience of a
City.” I bought a couple, thinking they might make good Christmas presents for anyone interested in Houston or baseball or both.
I haven’t checked, but after this week’s dreadful events I’m thinking Book People may be giving away “Hurricane Season.” The next time I see the book — the title in Astros orange and blue, the cover photo commemorating the delirious downtown victory parade — it’s likely to be on a dusty shelf in some dingy secondhand store, near a stack of venerable National Geographics and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.
I should mention that I’m the author of “Hurricane Season.” I wrote the book in the weeks and months following that amazing confluence of events in the late summer and fall of 2017. Those were the days, of course, when a city battered by Hurricane Harvey found strength, resilience and hope in a group of young, supremely talented ball players. Playing the game with joy and panache, and, post-Harvey, with a driving sense of purpose beyond the game itself, the ’17 Astros brought home — home to Houston — a World Series championship as this community desperately needed someone to cheer for, something to take our minds off blue-tarped roofs and streets lined with soggy, smelly rem
nants of what had been family treasures.
The story captured the heart of a nation. I know; I did interviews and call-in shows with radio and TV stations around the country.
Was I surprised to discover that the guys we so admired were apparently cheating throughout that glorious championship season and beyond? On the one hand, yes, I was surprised that a team so talented, a team that boasted the José Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and the rest, felt the need to cheat. Under team owner Jim Crane, vaunted general manager Jeff Luhnow and muchadmired manager A.J. Hinch, our heroes played for an organization generally recognized as one of the best — if not the best — in professional sports. And still they felt the need to flout the rules. Maybe at some point youthful exuberance transmuted into youthful arrogance.
On the other hand, I wasn’t all that surprised. My passing experience with the Astros’ front office while researching and writing the book was unpleasant, to say the least. I can see how a cheating scheme could have happened in that atmosphere.
That’s all I need to say about my personal dealings with the organization, except to echo the words of Major League Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred. “(While) no one can dispute that Luhnow’s baseball operations department is an industry leader in its analytics, it is very clear to me that the culture of the baseball operations department, manifesting itself in the way its employees are treated, its relations with other Clubs, and its relations with the media and external stakeholders, has been very problematic,” Manfred wrote in his 10-page indictment of the Astros.
It’s revealing to me that the Astros’ cold front-office culture burst into view not so much when disgruntled ex-Astros pitcher Mike Fiers revealed the sign-stealing scheme. The revealing portent was when Brandon Taubman, one of Luhnow’s top assistants, pulled his now-infamous stunt in the wake of the team’s acquisition of reliever Roberto Osuna, a player tainted because of accusations of domestic violence. During the clubhouse celebration after the Astros won last season’s American League Championship Series, Taubman shouted in the direction of three female reporters: “Thank God we got Osuna! I’m so f------ glad we got Osuna!”
The Astros initially stood by Taubman’s denial that he was taunting the women. The team questioned the women’s honesty and their professional ethics. Eventually Taubman’s juvenile outburst cost him his job — and got him banned from Major League Baseball for a year.
Watching and reading from the outside, I’m not sure that Luhnow understood the significance of the Taubman incident, although Manfred certainly does. “At least in my view,“he wrote, “the baseball operations department’s insular culture — one that valued and rewarded results over other considerations, combined with a staff of individuals who often lacked direction or sufficient oversight, led, at least in part, to the Brandon Taubman incident, the Club’s admittedly inappropriate and inaccurate response to that incident, and finally, to an environment that allowed the conduct described in this report to have occurred.”
In other words, the sign-stealing scheme festered in that environment. Luhnow claimed to know nothing about it, even though Manfred’s report cited “at least two emails” the GM received that mentioned the scheme. Hinch admitted to being aware, even going so far as disabling a video camera the cheaters were using. But that’s all he did. When they replaced the camera, he did nothing.
Why didn’t the team manager say something or do something?
Crane had no choice but to fire both men, just as the Boston Red Sox had to fire Alex Cora, their World Series-winning manager who allegedly was in on the scheme when he was the Astros’ bench coach in 2017. But the departures of Luhnow and Hinch do not get to the heart of the problem.
One winter morning, I drove downtown to interview Crane in the Astros boardroom near his fifth-floor office in the historic Union Station building abutting Minute Maid Park. While he finished up a meeting in Luhnow’s office, I took in the spectacular playing-field view from the boardroom windows — the pool table-green expanse of the outfield, the geometrically precise lines of the base paths and pitcher’s mound, the banks of forest-green seats. (Had I known where to look, I might have spotted the cheaters’ camera in center field.)
That view from high above is the owner’s view. He sees everything. Crane has professed not to know about the sign-stealing, but he should have. The boss has to take responsibility. A hard-nosed businessman before he got into baseball, Crane has to realize that running a logistics company is not the same as running a baseball team.
The players also have some explaining to do. I was in the stands the night Altuve, the heart of the Astros, blasted three home runs in the first game of the American League Division Series against the Boston Red Sox. Minute Maid Park went crazy. A couple of years and one sign-stealing scandal later, that little post-home run pirouette that Altuve and Correa perform — three times that glorious night — doesn’t look quite so charming.
On the back of the “Hurricane Season” dust jacket is a photo by peerless Chronicle photographer Steve Gonzales that shows Astros superfan and Pearland resident Jim Dean. Wearing his orange Astros jersey and an Astros cap, his arms above his head in exultation, Dean is standing in what had been the living room of his flooded-out house, the walls down to the studs, the floor bare concrete, an ice chest and a couple of camp chairs the only furniture — except for a wide-screen TV. He and wife, Jennifer, are watching the Astros.
I haven’t talked to the Deans since the scandal broke, although I suspect they’re a forgiving sort. Forgiving or not, they represent the thousands of fans the Astros betrayed.
So whadda you say, José? What do you and Alex and Carlos and the rest of your buddies — our heroes — have to say to Jim and Jennifer Dean? I hope it’s two words: “I’m sorry.”