By Bill Hendrickson
The refusal of Major League Baseball to penalize the Houston Astros players for cheating in their 2017 World Series win* against the Los Angeles Dodgers puts a new spin on a resolution passed in January by the L.A. City Council.
The resolution, presented by Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Paul Koretz, called on MLB to strip the Astros of the World Series trophy and give it to the Dodgers. The media panned the resolution, saying that it amounted to whining.
Actually, the flaw in the resolution wasn’t that it was whiny; it’s that the remedy was off point: No one earned the 2017 World Series trophy. The Astros cheated and the Dodgers were robbed of the fair chance to win. Redistributing the trophy wouldn’t help that sad situation.
But the idea behind the resolution – that cheaters should be held accountable – is right. And it’s especially important now that MLB has choked.
There’s a lot that MLB could have done. It could have suspended the Astros. It could have told the players to forfeit the money from the win* or to forfeit their championship* rings.
But MLB did not do anything to the players, even though MLB’s own investigation found that the cheating scheme was “player driven and player executed.”
On February 13, just as spring training got started, the Astro players offered some contrite words and hangdog faces and then said they were ready to play ball.
There is just one problem: The fans and other MLB players, coaches and managers aren’t ready to move on.
The pushback from their peers has sent the Astros even deeper down their ethical rabbit hole. “We always talk about forgiveness, but nobody wants to forgive,” said Dusty Baker, the Astros’ new manager. “The only way to achieve forgiveness is to apologize for what you’ve done wrong, and we’ve apologized for what we’ve done wrong.”
Here’s what Dusty Baker and his players don’t get: The way to move past a wrong is to apologize and to make amends. MLB hasn’t imposed any amends on the Astros players and the players certainly haven’t come up with any. So, the wrong endures.
This goes beyond a tainted World Series. This is another moment in American public life, when the rules you thought applied don’t. It’s a world where cheaters prosper.
The game really has changed.
YOUR SUPPORT HELPS MAKE OUR JOURNALISM POSSIBLE
PLEASE
[give_form id=”10189″ show_title=”true” show_content=”none” display_style=”button”]
Bill Hendrickson, MBA, publisher of the Boulevard Sentinel, has extensive small business management, marketing and sales experience in corporate finance and real estate development and plays a not terrible game of golf.
I don’t know who you are, but it’s apparent that you know nothing about baseball.
The commissioner put his report out, and suspended the manager and the general manager
Who were fired the same day. Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran set this sign stealing crap up.
Alex Cora went on to manage the Red Sox in 2018, and look at that….*THEY* won the world series in 2018!! You know how they did that??? The same way he set it up in 2017 with the Astros?. Carlos Beltran’s name was also in Manfred’S report about the 2017 world series…..A *LOT*.
The Red Sox players were given the VERY SAME immunity as the Astros players got. Manfred has not released his report on the 2018 world series yet…..so why don’t you wait until you see what he found out about THAT years world series, since they beat your precious Dodgers as well.
What the Astros did was WRONG, and they will have that stain for a very long time. What the Red Sox did was WRONG and they will have to wear that for a long time.
So spare us your sanctimonious Bull Sh!t….Manfred is investigating *7* other teams for cheating in the 2019 world series as well. GUESS WHO IS ON THAT LIST????? You know nothing about it.