I have a generic baseball fan question. I’m not taking any position on it, at least not yet. But I’m just curious what y’all think:
The Astros cheating scandal was about play in 2017 & 2018. Which story broke in 2019. We’re coming up on a decade since the cheating began. So:
Who’s left on the team or management who was formally implicated in knowing about the cheating or participating in it?
Who else wasn’t formally implicated but is widely suspected of having been involved? Any of those still on the team / in the front office?
When, if ever, does the Astros organization and its current or future members outlive the stain of the past for you? For most / nearly all fans?
What, if anything, could be done to speed that process for you? For others?
How much do you look at this as an organizational problem, versus a bad actor problem? Of the players and staff definitely involved, how do you feel about them playing later years for whoever else? Or now?
And any other question(s) or thoughts along these lines that strike you.
Not really looking for an item by item response, more just trying to elicit conversation hitting the kinds of points I’ve enumerated.
tl;dr:
Do / Did the Astros or the involved people ever recover, or should we ban them all from the owner down to the ball boys, forcibly disband the corporation, and ban the use of that name forever? Or something in between on some timeline?
What do you think for yourself? What do you think other people think?
There are clearly still some who hate the Astros organization for the scandal. I don’t really understand why those people aren’t equally vocal about the Red Sox, who were implicated a year later for extremely similar behavior during a World Series run.
I suspect a lot of it will die off even more once Jose Altuve retires. He definitely seems like the face of the scandal, and was also the heart of that team during their dominant stretch. I used to love Altuve - who couldn’t love a scrappy little elf who hit for a high average, much more pop than a child-sized human should have, and was amazing in the field? Then he ruined that for nearly everyone.
I think @Munch is mostly right, it will die down a lot when Altuve retires. However, to me at least it will linger as long as Jim Crane still owns the team.
It’s a shame in a way - Altuve has had such a great and unique career, but his reputation is so soiled by this link.
Consider the case of the New England Patriots. Under Bill Belichick and Tom Brady, they had two noteworthy cheating scandals: Deflategate and Spygate.
Belichick is gone, Brady is retired, and I don’t really hear NFL fans complaining about the Patriots and cheating anymore. I agree that it’s likely to fade away, for most fans, once Altuve retires.
After all of the things that have changed the face of baseball over the past 30 or so years (dating back at least to the steroid years) I find myself caring a lot less about cheating. To the point that I never really thought that the sign stealing scandal was all that egregious. I’ve never been an Astros fan, but I’ve also never really considered them stained by scandal either.
I also kind of think that the Cheatstros scandal will be among the last big sports scandals which was simply about cheating to win. Going forward, big scandals are now more likely to be related to sports gambling, IMO.
And as some of us (you and I both for sure plus IIRC some others) have discussed in another recent thread, winning is not necessarily the way to max profit for ownership. Said another way, ownership may not even be motivated to want to cheat to win, much less be willing to direct an attempt to try.
Admittedly the incentives change as you move down the food chain from owner to the executive offices to the coaching office and staff to the players as a group to individual players mindful of their career record.
For me, when Altuve admits what he did (which to my knowledge he’s never done) and leaves the game. As long as they keep him on the team, they’re tacitly admitting that they were okay with it and are just sorry they got caught.
Re: The Red Sox and Patriots referenced above, I disliked those teams BEFORE the scandals*, so it was more just proving me right than anything else.
I don’t think he lasts nearly that long. He had okay stats this year; .250 BA, 131 hits in 135 games, 50 ribbies, WAR 0.00. I’m guessing one more, maybe two.
And I agree with others: once he’s gone, then I’ll forget about the cheaters from Houston.
For those unfamiliar: Steve Ballmer, former Microsoft CEO and current owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, was involved in circumventing the NBA’s salary cap by signing star Kawhi Leonard to bogus “endorsement deals.”
Thank you both for that. I despise basketball so never knew of that.
Ballmer was a disaster at Microsoft and I’m unsurprised to see him continuing on-brand for his personal loathesomeness.
Although he’s now waay, waaay, waaaay down in the personal loathesomeness rankings. The competition has really upped their game in recent months & years.
I’m a lifelong Dodgers fan, and we were in a World Series drought for decades before that Series. So I won’t forget those cheaters in my lifetime, regardless of who owns them or who is or isn’t still playing for them.
I’ll stop calling them the Trashtros at that point and continue to hate them as a normal division rival. Just the same way I hate the A’s, Angels, and Rangers.
Once Altuve is gone, that’s the last of the scandal in my mind.
