“Winners never cheat and
cheaters never win” is a famous English proverb mentioned repeatedly in the
world of sports. Yet, cheaters won in Major League Baseball in 2017 when the
Houston Astros won the World Series only for a cheating scandal to be unearthed
two years later that detailed the team’s use of buzzers and technological
“aids” to help them detect opposing pitchers’ pitches before the ball was
thrown. The results: a multi-million dollar fine for the franchise, the loss of
a few near-future draft picks, and the general manager and field manager
suspended for the upcoming 2020 season. No players were punished for the
consequences.
This response to the
scandal has caused outrage from many sports writers, reporters, analysts, and
fans for the lack of punishments enforced. The Astros players who cheated
during this span ended up winning one World Series and two pennants without
getting punished, so why wouldn’t other players do the same to earn a trophy
and championship ring? Cheating has no place in sports and brings about
corruption and brokenness to a game that must always stay fair and equal to all
participating players and teams. With fan interest and viewership declining in
baseball, the MLB needs to take a good reevaluation of their response to the
Astros cheating scandal last year, and it needs to add more repercussions to
this scandal as well as warning clubs of what will occur should any future
scandals occur.
First, let’s get into the
timeline of when the scandal occurred and when it was unearthed that the Astros
were, in fact, cheating. In 2014, with instant replay review introduced to the
league, the use of technology helped teams determine when to challenge calls
and for the manager to confront the umpire to take a “second look” on a
specific play. With more technology instituted in the game, it was a matter of
time before scandals were revealed. Sure enough, one scandal was uncovered in 2017,
when the Boston Red Sox were “caught relaying sequences of signs from the video
room to a trainer who was in the dugout and received them on an Apple Watch” (Svrluga
and Scalin, 2020). MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred issued a warning to the league
of what the consequences would be if other teams stole signs electronically,
including the automatic firings of the team manager and the general manager. Yet,
video equipment remained nearby to the dugout, and furthermore the Astros used
it to their advantage. Used at home games during the 2017, 2018, and 2019
season, the team’s strategy was a camera placed in center field, “a video
monitor near the dugout and banging on trash cans to signal” upcoming pitches
for the Astros batter (Syrluga and Scalin, 2020). The Wall Street Journal
reported that this operation of deciphering the catcher’s signs “Codebreaker”.
Suspicions grew within
the league that something was amiss in Houston. Two weeks into the 2017 season,
the Astros were first place in their division and stayed there for the remainder
of the season. Scouts that evaluated the Astros to try to relay “their
tendencies to their [own teams] found their reports filled with material that
had never before been necessary” (Syrluga and Scalin, 2020). Executives, mainly
within the American League, were befuddled of how the Astros were doing so well.
One executive said, “We can’t beat them if they’re cheating”. Speculation grew,
but Astros players ignored it. The team’s manager laughed it off when the New York
Yankees accused the Astros of cheating, adding, “It made me laugh because it’s
ridiculous”. The Yankees had reason to speculate, losing to the Astros in the
2017 and 2019 playoffs. When Houston won the 2019 ALCS over the Yankees off a
walk-off homer by Jose Altuve, a video quickly went viral of Altuve warning to
his teammates as he reached home plate not to rip off his jersey, creating more
questioning around the league. “You’re covering up and holding your shirt
closed when you hit a homer to win the pennant”, one executive asked
rhetocically. “Who ever hit a home run to win the pennant and goes to the clubhouse
and 20 seconds later comes out in a different shirt?”
Surely enough, less than
two weeks after the 2019 playoffs concluded, the Astros were eventually exposed
for their cheating ways, when The Athletic released a bombshell of a
story reporting the strategy the Astros had in place for those three seasons. Sadly,
baseball has had more than its fair share of transgressions. The Astros scandal
occurred exactly 100 years after the “Black Sox Scandal”, when the Chicago
White Sox intentionally lost the 1919 World Series so some players could earn
money from gamblers. The most recent scandal that hit as grand as a scale as
the Astros’ was the “Steroid Era”, which took place in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Named the “worst scandal in the history of the sport”, it “destroyed more than
a generation of players” and disgraced those players’ careers (Bryant, 2020).
But while the Black Sox Scandal resulted in the permanent suspension of
cheating players from MLB and the Steroid Era has cost many notable players a
Hall of Fame spot, the Astros scandal had next to no consequences. The field
manager and general manager for Houston may have been removed from the team,
but not a single player faced the punishment of cheating. The Astros’ “championship
and records remain intact”, and Manfred has made it clear it will stay that way
(Bryant, 2020).
Manfred’s response to the
incident is simply lacking and inexcusable. Cheating ruins the integrity of the
game, regardless what sport it is. It forces players to join in, to be a part
of this “new norm”, where being opposed to cheating would you cast you as an
outsider within the team. Mike Bolsinger, a former pitcher for the Toronto Blue
Jays, lost his job after the Astros got four runs, four hits, and three walks
off him in a third of an inning during a 2017 regular season game in Houston.
Bolsinger suspected that “they know what was coming”, but his coaches doubted
him, sending him down to the minor leagues. Bolsinger’s outing against the
Astros that day was the last time he has played professional baseball.
As for the next
generation of baseball players, incidents like the one Astros had on their
hands is detrimental to their morality within the game. Cheating, and earning
accolades and trophies from doing so, encourages young athletes, whether in
little league ball, high school, or collegiate play, to repeat it within their
own competitions. It has already been made clear that as technology becomes
more and more easy to access, it has made the temptations of cheating in sports
stronger than ever before. Excluding the punishments cheaters would face, there
are many other negative consequences of cheating. Feelings of shame and guilt
arise, cheating hurts opponents (just like the case with Bolsinger), and lastly,
it negatively impacts the spirit of competition. Sports are “built upon the foundation
of fair play, and when [fair play] is broken it completely dismisses the values
of hard work and playing by the rules” (Stankovich, 2020). Decisions regarding integrity
and fair play happen during every sports play, and it is up to every athlete to
maintain that integrity and to aim to win fairly.
What happened within the
Astros organization during these three seasons taints not just the sport of
baseball, but the sporting realm of the professional sports league in the
U.S.A. If not for the 2019 World Series Champions Washington Nationals having
their pitchers be assigned five sets of pitching signs, there would have been
the possibility of Astros winning two championships in those three seasons. (Instead,
the Nationals won the series in seven, with all wins in Houston.) While Manfred
has indicated numerous times that there will be no more future consequences for
what the Astros have done, a second look into the issue should happen with additional
ramifications, such as potentially vacating the World Series the team won in
2017.
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