Another year, another Major League Baseball scandal. Cheating continues to go hand in hand with America’s favorite pastime.
Like clockwork, the league is quick to get ahead of the scandal, talking about preserving the “integrity of the game,” but is there still integrity in the game of baseball? For a sport that is so dependent on protecting its image and the ideal of integrity, no sport has been so laden with constant scandal and people trying to gain a competitive advantage.
In fact, you can go to Wikipedia and find an entire page dedicated to scandals in baseball. They go all the way back to the infamous “Eight Men Out” 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal to the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal of 2019. One hundred years of history means cheating is as ingrained in baseball as baseball is ingrained in American culture. But why does it seem like baseball has more cheating than the other four major sports?
It starts with the “unwritten rules” of baseball. The late, great catcher Joe Garigiola Sr. once said it plainly, “Baseball is a game played by human beings and governed by unwritten laws of survival and self-preservation.”
Baseball is a game of individuals, and survival means taking any and all advantages to succeed. Unwritten rules include a lot of different beliefs about not showing up a pitcher after a home run or no bunting when a pitcher is throwing a no-hitter. These are simple lessons on etiquette players are expected to follow.
You know what isn’t mentioned? Cheating.
From gambling to drugs to pine tar to sign stealing, there seemingly hasn’t been a decade without a baseball scandal.
It’s well-known in baseball circles that players will put extra pine tar on their bat to hit the ball further, or a pitcher may place rosin on his hat to allow his pitches to break more. There is no inspection for these maneuvers, unless a manager complains. Otherwise, players can get away with cheating all the time.
The steroid era is the black mark in baseball’s history. Seemingly, several baseball players through the 1990s and 2000s (some would argue the majority of professional players), were taking performance enhancing drugs. Many home run records were broken, and nobody talked about it for nearly two decades.
That brings us to the Houston Astros. Alex Cora, an assistant coach for the Houston Astros, who then became the manager of the Boston Red Sox, is thought to be the mastermind behind the intricate sign stealing methods used by the Astros, and potentially even the Red Sox.
The Astros used the instant replay in center field to get the signals of the opposing team’s catcher, and they had a system that allowed the signal to be passed to the dugout. Someone in the dugout would then signal to the hitter at the plate which pitch was coming.
It’s hit a level of conspiracy theory that involves Astros hitters wearing buzzers on their chests to signal off-speed pitches. While it seems no team has taken sign stealing to this level, it has been part of the game for decades. Players would stand at second base and signal to the hitter which pitch was coming next, and for years this went unchecked.
It’s a bad look for the Astros, and the home and away splits for their players are pretty incriminating. But baseball hasn’t changed, and it’s just as much a part of the game as everything we love about it as well.
