Yesterday Major League Baseball started its annual playoff season. Perhaps coincidental, the nationally acclaimed documentary series – Frontline, presented a new piece “The Astros Edge” which focused on the cheating scandal in 2017. Bob Reiter did an excellent job in bringing you the details of the incident. Of course, some players as well as organizational staff did not participate in the interviews. One lad in particular was interesting. He was the staff responsible for setting up the TV in the locker room which aided the team as part of cheating. The Astros won the coveted World Series and while his salary was $45,000, the team granted him a cut of the series pool which in his case totaled $450,000.
It took a couple of years to document the cheating but the ire to many is the decision made by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred regarding the punishment rendered. While there were some who were terminated, suspended and/or fined Manfred apparently was snakebitten in the decision he made in allowing the Astros to maintain the crown of being the winner of the series. Instead of being true to the integrity he preached, he took the cowardly, if not political decision to claim, “no harm-no-foul.” despite the evidence being right in his face. What????? If you’re found guilty of something, like cheating how can you be rewarded by keeping the title you allegedly won?
Most agree, a more fair decision would have been to simply strip the Astros of the title and proclaim there was no winner for the year 2017. Manfred could not pull himself to do this and the rest is history.
Here is the full documentary
Thomas Reports 