From a Scrub's Standpoint
As I have previously said in this space, at my core I am a baseball guy.
I love Husker football as much as the next guy, probably more than the next guy though maybe not quite as much as the guy next to him, but major league baseball was the sport I discovered first. Who could forget when my mom, the late, great Margaret Jensen, let me stay home two days in a row to watch the final games of the 1965 World Series, won by my new favorite team the Los Angeles Dodgers.
My late great father, Bud Jensen, never forgot because neither of us ever told him. Call it our little secret.
“My Dodgers” and the game of major league baseball are back in the news these days, and not for a particularly good reason. They were the team beaten by the cheatin’ Houston Astros in the 2017 World Series and members of the team have been very vocal in the past few days.
If you are a fan of major league baseball then you certainly have a baseline knowledge of the Astros pitch stealing scandal. If you are not, then I’ll be you have at least passing knowledge there is a scandal involving the Astros because it is all over the news, not just the sports news. (To read it in the papers you’d think they kidnapped the Lindbergh baby again.)
There has been cheating in baseball since the game was invented, of course, and for a long, long time it was a bit of a sacred art. Players and teams who were good at it were actually admired to some degree, opponents more jealous of their, um, rule bending than upset that it happened. Did I mention that happened before Al Gore invented the Internet?
This is a serious matter, not so much the cheating, which has gone on forever and a day, but for how it was done and how the plot was so involved. As serious as it is, and there is a pretty large school of thought that says the Astros stole that 2017 World Series title from both the Yankees, in the AL championship series, and my Dodgers in the World Series. Could be.
I do know this, the players involved, and while many of them are still Astros many others have moved on to other teams or left the game, will carry this scarlet letter for the rest of their careers. Would that have been so in the 1930s? 1950s? Shoot, the 1970s? I don’t believe so but in today’s social media connected world, and 24 hours a day to talk it to death, a trespass like this gets exponentially amplified.
Maybe it’s just worn me out - this investigation has been going on for weeks and months - but I am falling in like with Red Sox star J.D. Martinez, himself a former Astro (long before this scandal), who says enough’s enough. Let’s close the book on this chapter and let nature take it’s course.
Having said that, not sure that is even possible at this stage of the game. Since the investigation report was made there has been plenty of talk regarding bean balls and all sorts of other retaliation, or what they call having the players police their own game, which is a point of pride in baseball, more so than in any other sport. And if you're Mike Fiers, the former Astros pitcher who spilled the beans on this whole mess, what happens with you?
One thing about it, the whole episode has major league baseball back in the news. This time of year there’s usual a flicker of media coverage because to the casual fan, or non-fan, the only two seasons to MLB are spring training and the World Series. There is more, of course, much more tied into the six-month marathon known as the major league baseball season.
It seems no matter what the Astros, their players and ownership do there is no getting the horse back in the barn. What is already a long season is going to seem very much longer for all of them, or I miss my guess.