Major League Baseball already had plenty on its plate.
The relationship between labor and management is, by most accounts, the worst it's been in a quarter century. Attendance has dipped across the sport for three straight years. Efforts to quicken the pace of play have largely been unsuccessful. And the industry is at a loss to explain the dramatic increase in home runs this past year, despite the rather obvious explanation that the baseballs -- manufactured by a company now owned by MLB -- have quite obviously changed.
Add to that a criminal investigation that an employee of the Los Angeles Angels may have helped contribute to the shocking death of Tyler Skaggs this past summer, the revelation that one of its umpires threatened violence over a political matter and an ugly bit of misogynistic clubhouse bullying on the part of a Houston front office executive and it's been rough sledding for Major League Baseball.
And then, this past week, it actually got worse.
Extensive evidence and first-hand accounts seemed to clearly demonstrate that one of the sport's most successful franchises, the Houston Astros, participated in a scheme in which camera and video monitors inside Minute Maid Park helped the home team decode opponents' signs in 2017, and, perhaps, beyond. (The Astros, while a wildly talented team, went 60-21 at home in 2019).
MLB is now conducting an exhaustive investigation of the matter, interviewing current and former players and coaches. Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who served as the Astros' bench coach when they won the World Series in 2017, has
already been interviewed, as has current Sox bullpen coach Craig Bjornson, who held the same role in Houston for a number of seasons.
This isn't the first instance of teams using technology to gain illegal advantages. The Sox were caught using Apple Watches in 2017, and the Yankees were found to have been using a camera to sneak a peek at catchers' signs in 2017. The issue was essentially laughed off in 2017 and both teams were fined. In retrospect, that was a significant mistake by the game, which missed an opportunity to make a statement and set precedent by assessing only fines.
But recall that commissioner Rob Manfred warned that future transgressions -- by those two teams or any others -- would not be dealt with so lightly. And Manfred is reported to be livid about this more recent discovery, with ESPN.com reporting that the severity of penalties "could be unlike anything seen in the sport's recent history.''
It's impossible to know what that could mean. Loss of draft picks? Monstrous fines? Lengthy suspensions? Even long-term (or lifetime) bans?
One MLB source noted ominously: "They're clearly taking it very seriously.''
In other words, the ramifications will go far deeper than a $50,000 fine, a relative slap on the wrist.
And that's as it should be.
While Manfred's legacy as commissioner may depend more on how he navigates the perilous labor path between now and the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement and whether he can effect meaningful gains in the sport's turgid pace of play, everyone will be watching closely on this one.
After all, Manfred is being confronted with an issue that impacts the game's integrity. The absolute worst thing that can happen to any sport is having paying customers doubt the authenticity of the outcome. If you leave a ballpark wondering if the victorious team won fairly and squarely, then you've lost the central appeal of the sport: namely, competition.
Fans go to -- and watch -- games because of the uncertainty surrounding the final result. The games aren't scripted, the winners and losers unknown. That's central to the game's appeal: we don't know what's going to happen.
However, if fans have reason to doubt that what they witnessed wasn't on the up-and-up, the game suffers irreparable harm.
That goes double given that baseball dips its toes into legalized gambling. The last thing such a venture needs are questions about the integrity of the competition.
As for Cora's liability in all of this, we shall see.
It would seem unlikely -- to say nothing of unjust -- for MLB to punish someone now employed elsewhere for misdeeds from more than two years ago. There would be two exceptions: if Cora is found to have devised the illegal system himself; or, if he chose to take the same system with him to Boston and has been operating a similar scheme in Fenway the last two seasons.
Both possibilities, needless to say, would seem remote.
It's the Astros in the crosshairs here. The organization has a well-earned reputation for arrogance in the way it operates, a point driven home with since-dismissed assistant GM Brandon Taubman reprehensible behavior during the ALCS, and further illustrated by the club's insistence that a Sports Illustrated account was fabricated. The Astros had to be shamed into firing Taubman, then belatedly apologized to the author of the SI story.
Now, this. More than a few teams will be rooting for Manfred to throw the proverbial book at the Astros. Given what's at stake, they might have it coming.
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