@DCPatriot Part of the problem there is that the rules against mechanical/technological/electronic from-off-the-field sign stealing didn't formally prescribe particular punishments and left it up to the commissioner's discretion. Rule 21(d), which Pete Rose broke,
does prescribe specific punishments: a year's banishment if you bet on baseball games in which you weren't taking part (as in, if all Rose had done was bet on games that didn't involve his team, he'd only have gotten a year's worth of siddown-and-shaddap), a lifetime's banishment if you bet on games in which you
were taking part---whether as a player, a manager, a coach. Rose broke both parts, and the revelation of just what was in the Bertolini notebooks five years ago really did put paid to any lingering Rose defenses. And they don't say "except if you bet on your team to win" (one of Rose's remaining pleas), either. (One point the Bertolini books helped to make, which often gets forgotten: Rose was so deep into betting with bookies that, on days he didn't bet on the Reds one way or another, that sent the street gamblers a message that those weren't particularly good days to bet on the Reds, and they'd adjust their betting plans accordingly. In other words, Rose's betting patterns on the Reds aided and abetted other extralegal street gamblers one way or the other no matter what.)
If the off-field sign stealing rules included specific punishments, that would make things a whole lot different not just for Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch but for those Astro players (we don't know exactly whom just yet other than the suspicion upon Carlos Beltran) who partook of or helped operate the Astro Intelligence Agency. (Based on the notorious video showing then-White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar working against the Astros, with the bangs on the can punched up a bit for better audibility by a viewer, I can suggest reasonably that both Evan Gattis and now-retired Brian McCann were two who worked with stolen signs sent their way. That's also the game in which Farquhar smelled an AIA rat enough to call time, call his catcher to the mound, and mix up their signs a little bit more to try thwarting the AIA . . . )
I'm going to go out on a limb now and suggest that it won't be long before those in the commissioner's office responsible for instigating review/rewrite of the rules will look into and change the rules against mechanical/technical/electronic from-off-the-field sign stealing to determine and include specific punishments for the high-tech cheaters.
