When flipping through the annals of Major League Baseball’s storied history, there is its fair share of black marks upon the game.
Game-fixing and gambling ran rampant in its earliest days — culminating with the infamous “Black Sox Scandal” of 1919 when the Chicago White Sox threw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds.
Seventy years later, it was on the national forefront again when the game’s greatest hitter, Pete Rose, for betting on baseball while playing and managing — including games he participated in.
Gambling and game-fixing have long been the epitome of unforgivable acts within the game with steroids joining the fold in recent decades. But now, Major League Baseball and commissioner Rob Manfred has a new crisis on hand.
An explosive report from Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic, released on Tuesday, revealed that the Houston Astros electronically stole signs during their World Series-winning season in 2017.
Ex-Astros players and staff, including pitcher Mike Fiers, told The Athletic that the Astros used a camera in center field during home games to steal signs in real-time and quickly relay the findings to the dugout.
Stealing signs has always been a part of the game with the most famous alleged instance coming in 1951 when the New York Giants aided Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” to win the National League pennant in the final matchup of a three-game playoff against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
While some believe it provides an unfair advantage, stealing signs is not illegal. If a player or coach can pick up on a sign or pitcher’s tip, that’s fair game.
It is illegal, however, to use electronic devices to aid in said sign-stealing — which is what the Astros clearly did. MLB passed that rule in 2001.
It is unclear at this time if the Astros continued using these methods over the past two years.
Houston is not the only team that has been accused of — or caught — doing this. Also, in 2017, the Red Sox were found to be using Apple Watches in the dugout to relay stolen signs to the team.
Manfred and Major League Baseball cannot waste much time letting such accusations and reports float around without taking action. The commissioner must be swift and precise while making an example of the Astros to send a message to the rest of the league.
Even if that means taking the unprecedented action of vacating their 2017 World Series championship.
It would allow Manfred to get back into the good graces of baseball fans as the game is facing a bit of an identity crisis.
After a season in which baseballs were considered “juiced,” leading to a record of home runs hit in a single season, many believe the league reverted to its old, dead baseballs in the postseason.
That topic quickly took the back burner, however, after a dismal display of umpiring during the World Series that will only accelerate the use of an automated strike zone.
The “Robo Umps” have been used in Independent Baseball with promising results.
It is slated to be one of the topics of conversation this winter that would also include MLB instituting the three-batter minimum rule for relievers — effectively ending the era of left-handed specialists.
The 40-man roster will also be no more, as teams will only be allowed to expand to 28 players in September.
Manfred’s dreaded pace-of-play tweaks could also see the tabling of an asinine rule that automatically puts runners on second base during extra-inning, regular-season games to speed things up. Though that one is a longshot for now.
All of those ideas to speed up the game and make it more appealing for fans with short attention spans needs to be put to the side for now.
Major League Baseball has an epidemic on its hands with electronic sign stealing and Manfred needs to ensure that the game can keep its soul rather than make it quicker.
