Waiting for Baseball
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Y E S !
The Tampa Bay Ray's will remain the Tampa Bay Ray's!
https://sports.yahoo.com/st-pete-won...8202--mlb.html
The Tampa Bay Ray's will remain the Tampa Bay Ray's!
https://sports.yahoo.com/st-pete-won...8202--mlb.html
That thing where you switch teams but it's still plausible you'll drive to your old team's place just on pure muscle memory. But even if you do, you won't be late for the game.
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...nt/4427714002/
Astros look like they're about to get hammered by MLB. What's appropriate for a pretty bad case of sign stealing? Suspensions, draft picks, fines are obvious but what else? Banning the manager and/or GM seems possible but would MLB go that far?
Astros look like they're about to get hammered by MLB. What's appropriate for a pretty bad case of sign stealing? Suspensions, draft picks, fines are obvious but what else? Banning the manager and/or GM seems possible but would MLB go that far?
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I'm thinking they'll lose several prominent draft picks (multiple first-rounders?), and be fined something in the millions. It's gonna be big. I dunno about lifetime bans, though. Maybe temporary ones?
They're not going to revoke any hardware, I don't think.
They're not going to revoke any hardware, I don't think.
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The only reason I think it may go towards bans is that teams were just warned NOT to do what the Astros did. Maybe one of those lifetime but not really lifetime bans like what's his name, Williams(?) in New Orleans got for bountygate. How far does Manfred want to puff up his chest? Revoking hardware never made any sense to me. The entire thing with winning a championship is the instant euphoria the players and fans get. Record books are fine but it's the party that follows a championship and that one or two week window were everything is great that makes winning one so cool.
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That's true, but another part of the enjoyment is the "nobody can take this away" thing. "Flags fly forever." They can't take away the in-the-moment satisfaction, as you say, but I imagine that asterisk would chafe for a lot of fans, and the organization, and probably taint that memory a bit. Ideally people would just not develop a genuine vicarious emotional stake in this stuff at all (so that they wouldn't much care if some other fan base threw the revoked hardware at them), but that's not changing any time soon.
Anyway, good point re: the warning. Defiance usually needs to be punished more than violation, in and of itself.
Anyway, good point re: the warning. Defiance usually needs to be punished more than violation, in and of itself.
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It’ll be similar to the Patriots in football, I imagine. Maybe a suspension for the manager and/or GM. Fines and loss of draft picks likely.
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I enjoy listening to baseball, and cricket for that matter, as they are 2 sports that have the time for the descriptions do make it possible to have a visualization of the action, as opposed to various football codes etc. The point being, coming from a perspective of not being completely ignorant, but perhaps not as well versed as those who grew up following baseball at close hand.
In regards to the current sign stealing scandal and it's place in the context of cheating in the sport as a whole though, it's interesting somewhat to consider how for example the use of PEDs, although not strictly enforced, or at least a blind eye turned, to literally enhance performance that otherwise players would not have been capable of or able to maintain.
But the thought occured to me a few months back when this story first broke, had actually done a rewatch of Eight Men Out, as it was 100 years anniversary of the Black Sox 1919 World Series. It's a film had sat through quite a few times over the past 30 years and have listened to the Eliott Asinoff book of the same name, which naturally goes into much more detail than the film contains. However, it was the film that I was specifically thinking of, and in particular the scene toward the end where Buck Weaver (John Cusack) points out that he never took any money, never made an error and batted .326, yet he was still banned, not for having cheated but for simply having been aware of others having agreed to. A fact that it should be noted that there was no rule about at the time, but was retrospectively enforced.
Now, in light of the Commisioner having literally made a statement after the BoSox incident a few years ago, no club, management or player should have been under any illusion about the legality of this practice, and by so doing, that the Astros were not complying with this, and indeed were benefitting from the practice of electronic sign stealing. The Commisioner did say that any further breaches will be met with much more substantial penalty than what the BoSox were subject to.
This isn't a case of retrofitting a punishment for a rule that never existed, as Buck Weaver was subjected to. Now, I'm not trying to make the case as to the rights or wrongs of Weaver's set of circumstances, but to highlight how someone who legally never broke an existing rule as it stood in 1919 and as part of a team who were considered to be the best in baseball in that era, was treated compared with the current Astros situation, who likewise have enjoyed considerable success in recent times, and no doubt part of that has to be attributed to what we know of the electronic sign stealing, and what they may be penalized retrospectively.
After all, considering MLB acknowledge Barry Bonds HR records, powered by the use of PED's, how then to strike off Jose Altuve's, attained through knowing what to expect from a pitcher through the use of electronic sign stealing? After all, if you know what's coming, you've a much better chance of being able to hit it. And how many, if any, of these multi-millionaire ballplayers who benefitted from the use of these stolen signs, the management of these players, those that actively participated in the transmitting and passing on of this information, whether under direction from club higher up's or of their own action, will likewise be dealt with by the Commisioner's Office in the same way as to make the game 'clean' once again?
Where is the balance? Where is the consistency? Where is the line and what happens to those that cross it?
Just food for off-season thoughts.
In regards to the current sign stealing scandal and it's place in the context of cheating in the sport as a whole though, it's interesting somewhat to consider how for example the use of PEDs, although not strictly enforced, or at least a blind eye turned, to literally enhance performance that otherwise players would not have been capable of or able to maintain.
But the thought occured to me a few months back when this story first broke, had actually done a rewatch of Eight Men Out, as it was 100 years anniversary of the Black Sox 1919 World Series. It's a film had sat through quite a few times over the past 30 years and have listened to the Eliott Asinoff book of the same name, which naturally goes into much more detail than the film contains. However, it was the film that I was specifically thinking of, and in particular the scene toward the end where Buck Weaver (John Cusack) points out that he never took any money, never made an error and batted .326, yet he was still banned, not for having cheated but for simply having been aware of others having agreed to. A fact that it should be noted that there was no rule about at the time, but was retrospectively enforced.
Now, in light of the Commisioner having literally made a statement after the BoSox incident a few years ago, no club, management or player should have been under any illusion about the legality of this practice, and by so doing, that the Astros were not complying with this, and indeed were benefitting from the practice of electronic sign stealing. The Commisioner did say that any further breaches will be met with much more substantial penalty than what the BoSox were subject to.
This isn't a case of retrofitting a punishment for a rule that never existed, as Buck Weaver was subjected to. Now, I'm not trying to make the case as to the rights or wrongs of Weaver's set of circumstances, but to highlight how someone who legally never broke an existing rule as it stood in 1919 and as part of a team who were considered to be the best in baseball in that era, was treated compared with the current Astros situation, who likewise have enjoyed considerable success in recent times, and no doubt part of that has to be attributed to what we know of the electronic sign stealing, and what they may be penalized retrospectively.
After all, considering MLB acknowledge Barry Bonds HR records, powered by the use of PED's, how then to strike off Jose Altuve's, attained through knowing what to expect from a pitcher through the use of electronic sign stealing? After all, if you know what's coming, you've a much better chance of being able to hit it. And how many, if any, of these multi-millionaire ballplayers who benefitted from the use of these stolen signs, the management of these players, those that actively participated in the transmitting and passing on of this information, whether under direction from club higher up's or of their own action, will likewise be dealt with by the Commisioner's Office in the same way as to make the game 'clean' once again?
Where is the balance? Where is the consistency? Where is the line and what happens to those that cross it?
Just food for off-season thoughts.
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Well, I came pretty close: $5 million, first and second round picks the next two years, and a one-year suspension for the GM and the manager.
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Well, I came pretty close: $5 million, first and second round picks the next two years, and a one-year suspension for the GM and the manager.
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Red Sox are next. If I was Cora, I’d be planning out my next year. He’ll have a lot of free time on his hands.
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No action taken against any of the players however. Can understand why the supposed 'adults in the room' have been held accountable, but this does not absolve the behaviour of the players that participated and benefitted from it also.
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Can I play. The sequel
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No action taken against any of the players however. Can understand why the supposed 'adults in the room' have been held accountable, but this does not absolve the behaviour of the players that participated and benefitted from it also.
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