No sign overblown scandal will fade
There are lies, damn lies and pretty much everything anybody says about the Astros being the worst cheaters in the history of baseball.
This story is so tiresome but apparently never going to die.
A century from now, are baseball fans really going to be talking about the Astros like we talk about the Black Sox? Is this going to be a hundredyear war on sign-stealing?
Silly me thought it would be treated like every other signstealing story throughout the history of the game. Laughed at, laughed off. Sign-stealing is such an acceptable part of baseball that before the Astros started banging trash cans, no team ever had been punished for it despite there being thousands of known occurrences.
We’re talking as far back as 1900, when the Phillies had a player, seated in the stands with binoculars, sending messages to the third-base coach via a buzzer.
Teams have used telescopes, telephones and lights on the scoreboard to find out what pitch was coming and relay the information to hitters.
Ah, but cheating wasn’t cheating until the Astros got involved.
Turn to the 21st century, and the ridiculousness of those who were doing the exact thing the Astros were, yet have the gall to act as if they weren’t, is amazing.
In the book “Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess,” former Houston Chronicle colleague Evan Drellich takes a deep dive into the sign-stealing scandal that resulted in the Astros firing a manager and general manager, along with the franchise drawing the maximum allowable fine and being stripped of draft picks.
To no one’s surprise, Drellich reports that stealing signs with video room equipment was a widespread MLB problem.
Like cheating spouses, or Spider-Man and his imposter in a popular meme, teams pointed fingers at each other because they all knew what they were up to.
The Red Sox were caught twice. The Yankees were caught as well. Apple watches were involved, and they told
on each other.
A Red Sox player told Drellich that the Dodgers, who lost to the Astros in the 2017 World Series and to the Red Sox in the 2018 World Series, were “the biggest cheaters in the whole (expletive) industry.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters at spring training that his team cheated the right way and thus has never been punished.
“All the things that went down, punishments and all that stuff, MLB did a great job of being thorough,” Roberts said. “That’s not my job to be the judge and jury.”
Well, no, typically, the defendant cannot be the judge and jury.
Roberts was so smooth with his “within the rules” tale that his nose didn’t even grow.
Much of the focus has been on the Astros, Dodgers, Red Sox and Yankees. These just happen to be the teams that were winning the most games during the electronic sign-stealing period.
If you don’t think teams at the bottom of the standings were cheating, you probably think only Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens were on steroids. (And you might have once bought a bridge.)
Every honest baseball player who has been asked has said every team he has been on cheated or tried to cheat.
Compared with the Astros, these other teams were just a little bit pregnant?
“Everybody else was doing it” is not a defense for the Astros’ actions. But understandably, the team wonders why it is the only one forced to wear the scarlet letter.
This isn’t about semantics. It is about a flat-out massaging of history.
The Scapestros have been released into the wild to take on all of the sins of a cheating baseball community.
Look, driving five miles an hour over the speed limit is not the same as racing 50 miles an hour over it while shotgunning a beer. But stealing signs is stealing signs. Using video cameras to steal signs is using video cameras to steal signs.
The only teams in Major League Baseball that didn’t use the replay room cameras to try to figure out what signs opposing catchers were sending to pitchers were the dumb ones.
Basically, MLB left bags of cash on the street and acted appalled that some teams took the money and ran.
The Dodgers grabbed a bag and ran but complained that the Astros ran faster.
MLB bungled this completely.
The only member of the Red Sox organization who was punished for their cheating was video operator J.T. Watkins. He was suspended for the 2020 season for allegedly running a one-man sign-stealing operation.
He recently was hired by the Dodgers.
Drellich reports that Watkins did OK financially during his suspension because Red Sox players put together a fund for him. According to a source detailing a call among players and staff, “We know what he did for us, so it’s on us to take care of him.”
Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who was Houston’s bench coach in 2017, served a oneseason suspension for his role in the Astros’ scheme.
That was after he led Boston to the 2018 championship.
Mookie Betts, a star on that Red Sox team who is now with the Dodgers, told the Los Angeles Times this week that Boston used live video to steal signs.
“Yeah,” Betts said. “Everybody was.”
That’s the truth.