There is no shortage of people who can point out the problems affecting this country. But when it comes time to actually do anything about them, that’s when things seem to fall apart. Concern turns to arguments and rationalizations that downplay the severity or significance of any given issue. Big ideas give way to half-hearted corrective measures. Calls for justice become slaps on the wrist for any wrongdoing and fear of any changes that might rock the boat a little too much. This inability to deal with consequences and insist on accountability holds true for most aspects of society.
When I was a teenager during the 90s, Bill Clinton’s One America Initiative was an attempt to start a dialogue on racial divisions. It was at the time not just lauded for trying to move the ball down the field toward reconciliation, but also lamented by civil rights activists for not going far enough and criticized by (white) conservatives for not doing enough to placate their fee-fees. In the years since, there have been multiple calls for a national dialogue on race, usually after the senseless death or mistreatment of a person of color. The dialogue always seems to consist of marginalized peoples saying discrimination is bad, white people nodding their heads in agreement while thinking that because they don’t have a sheet over their head they’re not part of the problem, and the powers that be and culture as a whole moving on without any serious consideration of what fixing two centuries of discrimination might actually entail.
The same dynamic is true of approaches to dealing with climate change, health care, poverty, government corruption—anywhere there’s outrage and pressure from the public to do something. When that pressure forces a discussion, the discussion tends not to lead to a true examination of solutions by people in a position to do anything about the issue, because that would be too damn hard or step on too many toes. This can be seen all across America, from the way local police departments deal with allegations of brutality, to the corridors of the White House and the lack of any check on creeping authoritarianism, and all the way to the diamonds of Major League Baseball, where cheating by the Houston Astros seems to symbolize everything wrong with American culture at the moment.
News of the Astros’ cheating scheme broke late last year, and information about it has emerged with time. Major League Baseball’s conclusions about the Astros and their system, released in a report last month, confirmed that the team used a video camera in center field to film opposing teams’ catchers' signs to pitchers. Astros players or team staffers would watch the live camera feed in the dugout and signal to Astros batters what kind of pitch was coming by loudly banging on a garbage can. All of the Astros’ maneuvers, whether free agent signings or surreptitious cameras, ultimately resulted in Houston winning the 2017 World Series.
While maybe we should have not been surprised by fraud perpetrated by a team that plays in a park that used to be named after Enron, the scandal has since expanded, leading to questions about the 2018 World Series title captured by the Boston Red Sox, the use of even more hidden devices, lies about potentially nonexistent tattoos, and criticisms of the MLB leadership’s response, which has been described as “downright Trumpian.” But all of this is part and parcel of a culture with underlying problems accepting accountability. In short, we are a people who will complain about the mess, but in the end allow our biggest institutions to keep the results of flawed “games”—and rationalize keeping them on the books, rather than untangling the issues that created them in the first place.
In recent weeks, speculation has centered on whether the Astros also used buzzing devices under their uniforms, something of which the MLB claims it found no evidence, but that’s not the same as saying it didn’t happen. Attention has also been paid to the odd behavior of second baseman Jose Altuve after his ninth-inning walk-off home run in Game 6 of the 2019 ALCS. As Altuve approaches home plate, he grabs his jersey and warns his teammates not to rip it off.
When asked about it in a post-game interview, Altuve said he was “too shy,” and blamed his wife for not wanting him to be shirtless. Other Astros players have put out excuses that reinforced the notion of Altuve as a “shy” person, and also went further by arguing he had a bad, unfinished tattoo on his collarbone that he was ashamed of people seeing. The only problem? Images on Altuve’s own Instagram account show that he did not have a tattoo on his collarbone in the summer of 2019, unfinished or otherwise, and there’s very little evidence of it being there until this year.
The penalty handed down by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred against the Astros has been met with extremely negative responses from both fans and players, who feel it doesn’t go far enough. Sure, the Astros lost draft picks and were fined $5 million, and Houston’s GM Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinton received one-year suspensions from the league and were then fired by the franchise. Boston’s manager Alex Cora was also preemptively fired, as was the new skipper of the Mets, Carlos Beltran; both had coming to their teams via Houston.
However, the Astros get to keep their 2017 title. Thanks to immunity deals provided as an impetus to get people to talk as well as concerns about the reaction of the MLB players union so soon before having to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement, not one Astros player involved was suspended. Furthermore, a $5 million fine on a billion-dollar organization owned by a billionaire is not particularly punitive. And the suspensions and firings that did occur have the feel of being more along the lines of hitting the Roger Stone types and Rudy Giuliani-style flunkies rather than the people who really benefited from the scheme. All of it reinforces the belief that the same sports organization that has banned Pete Rose from the Hall of Fame for gambling is letting the Astros keep a World Series win out of fear of what it might actually mean to start pulling at the threads of this thing too hard.
The Astros themselves have not helped the situation. Their attempts at an apology have been widely panned, since they’ve twisted the truth along the way. When the owner of the Astros, Jim Crane, claims that the team’s video setup “didn’t impact the game,” only to contradict himself mere seconds later ...
… it’s the sort of gaslighting that’s become all too familiar to Americans in recent years.
As the depth of the scheme becomes clearer, the Astros have become one of the most reviled organizations in all of sports. After all, the team didn't just create a system to cheat its way to a World Series title. And the Astros leadership didn't just excuse misogyny among its ranks and scream "fake news" when women journalists reported brutish behavior in the Astros locker room. It's not even just that Houston players continued to lie about their actions until irrefutable proof emerged.
It's that, even despite all this, the Astros will still walk away from the mess with a trophy.
At a time when the country’s political apparatus has been unable to confront illegality at the highest levels, the parallels in baseball are striking. It’s not hard to compare the Astros to today’s Republicans.
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Attempts to investigate an organization with a history of being deceptive and lying to the press, including not telling the truth about its mistreatment of women, result in either dubious denials, claims that it’s being railroaded by media peddling fake news, or more questions.
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Except for the most ardent Astros fans, the general public now doubts the legitimacy of the organization’s victories, but the powers that be continue to struggle with any possible remedy.
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The actions of the organization have spread to affect the greater community, with others adopting their methods by behaving in exactly the same way.
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Defenders of these actions point to the normalization and say, “Everyone is doing it,” or that the rules aren’t cut and dried. The argument about things being “inappropriate but not fatal” is put forward as a rationalization, with justifications of lackluster oversight resting on the governing body being able to do whatever it wants, since it’s a political decision, not a legal one.
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Since we can’t prove with scientific certainty the extent to which any cheating may have been a benefit to the cheaters, then whether it be sign-stealing or Russian hackers, it’s not as bad or as big a deal as the media or opponents want to make it.
The outrage among baseball fans and baseball players is mirrored in the outrage among average Americans watching their country crumble under Donald Trump. The result has been the same: We watch the things we care about mistreated and corrupted, and are disappointed that there’s no recourse for us, or any action taken to make things right by those with the power to do something about it. The only way some people feel they can get back at those who’ve done wrong is to bean Astros hitters with a baseball, or to hope an election and snarky tweets will change things. Either way, the lawful remedies meant to deal directly with the problems are useless, or unused.
In the meantime, the ones who’ve lied and the ones who’ve cheated still have their ill-gotten championship and presidency—and may end up winning it all again this year—unless the people who give a damn successfully effect change. On the MLB front, some baseball fans are testing the waters of a class-action lawsuit over the Astros scandal. Fans can also vote with their wallets and feet by not giving the Astros their business. In politics, millions of Americans are putting in their resources, labor, and time to create a different tomorrow. The 2020 election will tell us what kind of America people want to have going forward: Will it be an America of laws and standards, or a country based on cults of personality in which the whims of those in power enforce a narrow vision?
Baseball has already suffered for years from demographic issues that provide ominous indicators for its future. Analysis of the fanbase points to baseball being watched by a demo that’s “too old, too white, and too few,” while at the same time participation in Little League has plummeted. The sport has been slow to adapt to new innovations and face its structural problems. The sport has also been plagued with cheating, whether with cameras or with performance-enhancing drugs. Almost all of those issues of legitimacy and the alienation of a diverse audience could easily be applied to the Republican Party and its time in power.
Thus, in its own way, baseball really is America’s game.