A Congressman wants Astrogate hearings. Oh, swell.

[EasyAce]

By Yours Truly
https://calltothepen.com/2020/01/19/mlb-a-congressman-wants-astrogate-hearings-oh-swell/



Remember Ronald Reagan's crack about the worst thing you could hear being, "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help?" You may want to keep it in mind over Astrogate, now, unfortunately.

When baseball commissioner Rob Manfred dropped the nuke last Monday, he did it only after a scrupulous enough probe, after offering immunity for players partaking of the Astro Intelligence Agency. Instead of sending flunky players on the perp walk, he held the bosses who enabled it to account. So, almost at once, did the Astros' owner who canned Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch, not to mention the Red Sox owner who put Alex Cora before a firing squad and the Mets administration who strapped Carlos Beltran aboard their lethal injection gurney.

Not good enough, says Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce. Like a few too many hundred thousand baseball fans, so it seems, Rush wants hearings, names, and flunky players doing the perp walk. Preferably single file to the guillotine.

Rush has sent a letter to House Energy and Commerce chairman Frank Pallone (no known relation to the late, tragic umpire Dave Pallone), and to two fellow subcommittee members, saying, "It is clear that Major League Baseball is firmly in the midst of an ethical crisis. Cheating in any sport is anathema, especially in professional sports. Many children, and adults for that matter, look up to professional athletes as a testament to the American dream and what is possible through hard work and determination. This latest fiasco is nothing short of a gut punch to those ideals."

Swell. Rush wants another House Panel for the Dissemination of Great Messages to Kids. (That's what George F. Will once snorted about the committee that made perp walks out of the scandal involving actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances.) A government official demanding hearings into sports cheating is like a fox demanding investigations into security breaches at his neighbour's hen house.

Yes, assorted from-the-inside complaints about cheating via electronic sign-stealing fell upon deaf or at least somewhat indifferent ears until this past November. But when Mike Fiers finally blew the whistle to The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich, Manfred pounced. He ordered up as complete a probe as he could get, gathered up as much evidence as he and his bloodhounds could gather, pronounced sentences, and prodded three owners to act fast enough. And that's before his final evidence and report on the Red Sox---accused of running sign-theft reconnaissance from their replay room to baserunners to send to batters---emerges.

Manfred's predecessor and the owners of that period looked the other way over actual or alleged PEDs for only too long and all but invited Congress to produce the dog and pony show. Yes, government requires an invitation to deliver a dog and pony show about as much as Superman requires human growth hormone. If Rush gets what he asks of Pallone, he's really saying Manfred forgot to deliver the swell message to the kids aboard the guillotine blade descending through the flunky players' necks.

Alex Bregman, Astros third baseman (2017 postseason splits: .857 OPS home; .508 OPS road), didn't help Saturday. Facing the press at Astros FanFest, Bregman said this about Manfred's Astrogate probe, report, and disciplines: "The commissioner came out with a report, MLB did their report, and the Astros did what they did, meaning they made their decision on what they're going to do. I have no other thoughts on it." A lot of people might translate that to mean, "Run along, sonny, you bother me." Some of them might have jobs like Rush's that allow meddlesome tendencies to run like the Flash, or at least like Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson.

Meanwhile, this just in, more or less. The Mets may have had more than just a prospective image problem in mind when they cashiered Beltran. Turns out a couple of Mets pitchers, Jacob deGrom and Edwin Diaz, suspected sign stealing against them in 2019,

according to SNY's Andy Martino. "DeGrom in particular was angry about it," Martino says. "How could Beltran lead players, and there are many, who think the practice is wrong?"

Baseball's electro-cheating scandal indicates the sport does have a serious ethical problem, as among others Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci says forthrightly enough. On that nobody really disagrees. But taking lessons in ethics from a member of today's political (lack of) class is something akin to learning about love from Harvey Weinstein.
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[catfish1957]

It has been a newswide worst about 10 days than I can remember in quite a while.

Neil Peart dies...

Astros get zapped in an embarassing manner.
Saints and Texans get popped out the playoffs.

And today was the final straw.....   Dusty Baker being interviewed for Hinch's replacement.  And honestly, from recent reading, I think when it is said and done, we will be looking at just a handful of teams that didn't break the rules.

So, after 55 years of faithful fandom of this game, I have had enough.  This will be my last post on any baseball related thread for the forseeable future.

[truth_seeker]

Cancel all titles, money's, etc. derived from cheating.

Award same, to next runners up.

For the impacted years of course, asterisks apply.

The leagues, teams, players themselves, SHOULD have had an interest, in preventing this.

My suspicion is there must have been talk going back for awhile.

 Leave the government out of it.

[EasyAce]

The leagues, teams, players themselves, SHOULD have had an interest, in preventing this.

My suspicion is there must have been talk going back for awhile.

@truth_seeker

There was talk. Around most of baseball on the inside, there were a lot of players talking both among themselves and to assorted sportswriters that they smelled electro-rats . . . but aside from how futile it was for them to convince any game higher-ups to take it seriously, the writers (I saw several point it out before I wrote about something related to it the other day) found themselves hard-pressed to get even a single player to agree to let his name be attached to it until Mike Fiers finally decided to stop beating his head against the walls on the inside and took it to The Athletic.

Remember: Baseball is like police work in this sense---the inner culture demands you keep your trap shut publicly and work out questions or issues on or about the job on the inside. At least, until or unless you can't get them resolved that way. And even then you risk a lot by taking it public when nothing else works. Mike Fiers isn't liable to be set up for a shot in the face the way Frank Serpico was in 1972, of course, but there was an awful lot of sentiment more concerned with shooting the messenger as a rat fink than with the major issue Fiers raised.

This also came out today---there was more to the Mets giving Carlos Beltran the push than just the likely image problem they'd have faced if they kept him. At least two Mets pitchers including Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom suspected there was technocheating afoot against them and, as deGrom's said to have put it, how the hell could Beltran, credibly, lead a team that objected to that kind of cheating when he'd been in it up to his ass?

[truth_seeker]

@EasyAce

Thanks. Good eplanation.

I believe that only severe negative consequences, will send a strong enough message.

[Cyber Liberty]

I feel the same as you do about this Rush thing, @EasyAce, but I could never got 700 words out of "If the government is involved, it's destined to turn into feces." 

[DCPatriot]

I wonder what the over and under in Vegas is right now for Altuve, Correa, and Bregman to lead the league in HBP this year?

LOL!  It's actually no different mentality than they tell us existed in the Old West.

Some pitchers have already made blunt statements showing their disgust.   New ear holes by the end of April for all.

[EasyAce]

I feel the same as you do about this Rush thing, @EasyAce, but I could never got 700 words out of "If the government is involved, it's destined to turn into feces." 

@Cyber Liberty

Well, that's why they pay me the not-so-big-bucks! 

[AllThatJazzZ]

It has been a newswide worst about 10 days than I can remember in quite a while.

Neil Peart dies...

Astros get zapped in an embarassing manner.
Saints and Texans get popped out the playoffs.

And today was the final straw.....   Dusty Baker being interviewed for Hinch's replacement.  And honestly, from recent reading, I think when it is said and done, we will be looking at just a handful of teams that didn't break the rules.

So, after 55 years of faithful fandom of this game, I have had enough.  This will be my last post on any baseball related thread for the forseeable future.

@catfish1957

Had to Google Neil Peart and Dusty Baker. Unfamiliar with both. I did read up on Baker a little. He doesn't sound like a good fit. A.J. will be hard to replace. I wonder if there's anyone out there who's available who has a managerial philosophy similar to A.J.'s. But I'm just talking to myself here, since you've sworn off baseball. Just in case you read this, I'll just say that it's been horribly painful to have loved a team that ended up breaking baseball. Not everyone will get it. So many still want blood spilled (figuratively). And now we have a goober in Congress (a Dem, natch) who believes government needs to step in and fix it. Bobby Rush. A moron if ever there was one.



@EasyAce

When will your article be published? I'd like to share it with a couple of friends.

[EasyAce]

@EasyAce

When will your article be published? I'd like to share it with a couple of friends.

@AllThatJazzZ

So far as I know, it'll be published on Sunday. When it is, I'll make the link available to you.

Until then, my friend, I would urge you to read one I had published on Friday, "The cheaters don't always prosper," the conclusion of which is as follows:

Now, guess what? Baseball has survived the worst ever since Billy the Kid shot his first victim, Thomas Edison invented the record player, the Washington Post was born, and four Louisville Grays were caught tanking games for fun and profit and banned for life, forcing the Grays to fold out of the National League of which they were charter members.

Baseball survived the 1877 Grays. It survived the 1910 St. Louis Browns trying to hand Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie the batting title against Ty Cobb. It survived the 1919 White Sox and the rampant gambling further exposed. It survived first the disgrace of the color line and then the growing pains that followed Jackie Robinson‘s courage. It survived Cincinnati’s semi-organized campaign of stuffing the All-Star ballot box on behalf of the 1957 Reds, which cost fans the All-Star vote for over a decade to follow. (And, alas, didn’t quite end such stuffing in the long term.) It survived two in-season strikes, the Pittsburgh drug trials, owners’ collusion, Pete Rose, and the era of actual or alleged performance-enhancing substances.

Just as every last presidential and Congressional election in our lifetimes has been called the most. important. election. in. history. (with or without hysterical tones), practically all baseball’s most notorious scandals have been called the most. embarrassing. scandal. in. baseball. history. But I have something to say to Evan Longoria* and to everyone who loves the game as deeply as I do, the foregoing history notwithstanding.

As you do not go gently into that good grey night, as you rage, rage, against the blasting of our faith if you must, remember while you rage the wisdom (and double-negative mastery) of a baseball sage named Sparky Anderson: “We try every way we can think of to kill this game, but for some reason nothing nobody does never hurts it.”

It doesn’t feel that way, now, and how long it feels that way depends in great part on what further baseball’s government can and will do to thwart Astrogate-like espionage without wrecking the technology that (yes, it does) enhances rather than embalms our game. But it always proves true in due course. For which those who love the game, and those who play the game honorably, should never lose gratitude.

(* It was seeing Evan Longoria, Giants third baseman, tweet, "Whatever happened to cheaters never prosper," that prompted me to write the complete essay.)

[GrouchoTex]

@EasyAce

As far as guys from Chicago named Rush, I'll take Otis over Bobby any day.
 

As far as the whole cheating thing goes, here's where I am at today:

https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2020/1/20/21070757/sign-stealing-scandal-houston-astros-yankees-red-sox-brewers-cubs-phillies-mets-dodgers-rangers-mlb

A good article with interesting comments. I am not excusing the Astros, They are guilty of cheating, but I think they are being made the fall guy, to a certain degree.
The article point both of these things out.

[EasyAce]

@EasyAce

As far as guys from Chicago named Rush, I'll take Otis over Bobby any day.
 

So would I!

As far as the whole cheating thing goes, here's where I am at today:

https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2020/1/20/21070757/sign-stealing-scandal-houston-astros-yankees-red-sox-brewers-cubs-phillies-mets-dodgers-rangers-mlb

A good article with interesting comments. I am not excusing the Astros, They are guilty of cheating, but I think they are being made the fall guy, to a certain degree.
The article point both of these things out.

I suspect we're going to know soon enough who all else besides the Astros and the Red Sox were up to something. Even the two Athletic reporters who busted the whole thing open via Mike Fiers said the same stuff. (Hell, I said it myself, too. But not knowing just whom, that's about as far as I was willing to go, other than looking at the historical records a few other times. The one that jolted me---since I was a kid just getting into baseball at the time and unaware of the hoopla---was knowing Rogers Hornsby and a couple of others kicked off a small furor about off-field-based sign stealing approaching spring 1962.)