St Louis Cardinals @ Boston Red Sox, May, 12, 2023
I am reflecting on the concept of 'fair play' as I follow both the 2020 World Series and US Elections. Perhaps as consolation for a Red Sox fan, as we watch every highlight play from Mookie Betts, is our knowing the Yankees and the Astros are out. I still love Mookie, Dave Roberts, and Joe 'Fight Club' Kelly who are all on the Dodgers, but it feels weird to root for the Dodgers (coming from the San Francisco Bay Area). Though I respect the Rays and their approach to the game, if a 'moneyball' team had to be in the Series, I wish it was the A's. 'Fair play' doesn't care what we want as fans, only that the players act in accordance with agreed-upon rules – whether the realm of competition is in baseball, politics, ideas, or the selection of Supreme Court Justices. Anyway, it seems the Series is off to a good start.
Another consolation is more difficult to explain – but exists in the realm of appreciating what it means to win and lose. I'm subscribed to a baseball podcast created by Ben Reiter, a writer for Sport Illustrated. His podcast, The Edge, focuses on the Houston Astros, a team that has been the subject of much of his writing. But this is a personal, soul-searching trip through their sign-stealing scandal. So it's not a podcast for Astros fans, but for baseball nerds who are (maybe) rooting against the Astros – or who are at least rooting against cheating.
When someone (a team) we care about suffers tragedy (a devastating loss), we hope some good comes from it. In this case, the tragedy involves not losing, but winning the World Series. So the winning cannot be the good, even though the win is not forfeit.
To determine the good, we separate winning from good and ask: why does the best team in baseball feel the need to cheat? And what becomes of the sports maxim, 'may the best team win'? Reiter's deconstruction includes a deep-dive into the American competitive psyche, and sounds an echo of the words that ring in my ears this election year: we’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning. Though we may not achieve a 'proper' or 'just' resolution, in the asking there is catharsis.
Such winning, both callous and hollow, devalues everything we love about the game or the process – in a way that losing never could. From such a violation, though we may not attain it, it's our right to seek justice.
For example, the first episode introduces us to Mike Bolsinger, a journeyman pitcher with the Toronto Blue Jays. He pitched against the Astros on the night of August 4, 2017, and got rocked: 0.1IP, 4H, 4R, 4ER, 3BB, 0K, 1HR, 8BF, 29-13Pc/St. However, programmer and Astros fan, Tony Adams, analyzed all the audible banging in all the home games in 2017, and found that the Astros used their sign-stealing-camera-to-trash-can system more times than any other – on the night of August 4th. Bolsinger never pitched again in the major leagues.
The Astros' cheating isn't just an abstract injustice against 'baseball' or 'sportsmanship' – it's a personal injustice. In February, Bolsinger sued the Astros, seeking damages and the donation to charity of all $31 million in World Series bonuses. He wants answers:
"How you think it's okay?" would be probably the number one question that I'd ask. Why did you think that this was right? How can you not think that this was wrong, what you did?
Those are excellent questions, important questions. Justifiably, Bolsinger is sick and tired of the Astros' winning. However, the podcast is a mea culpa for Reiter, who adds some questions of his own:
After the scandal broke, I spent a lot of time agonizing over my reporting, searching my memory and my notes for any thread I might have been able to pull that would have unraveled the whole thing. I couldn't find one.
So I decided to go back to the story that has defined my career and dig deeper, to understand the specifics of how the Astros cheated: who benefitted from it? who's to blame? and what about it made everyone so angry?
I aslo want to ask bigger questions about how corruption takes root, and how an institution's culture informs the decision-making of those who are a part of it. If you're skeptical, I get it. I am, or at least I was, 'Astrodamus' – the guy who supposedly knew everything about the Astros, except for the enormous secret that disgraced them. But that's exactly why I've spent the better part of the past year working to get the story right, and to try to answer the biggest question of all: what drove one of the most forward-thinking organizations in the history of sports not just to the edge … but over it?
The story of the Astros scandal is a very American story: a bunch of high-paid, super-talented over-achievers who resort to illegal acts in order to win. The highly-paid and super-talented don't need illegal acts to win on most days, but regardless, real over-achievers employ them. "If you're not cheating, you're not trying." Which means they are happy to crush the fair-minded and the merely talented along the way. Reiter reminds us that the Astros play in a park that used to be called Enron Field.
I have questions, too. Why can't we accept losing, i.e., not winning? What or how are we willing to corrupt in order to win? What if the achievement of our ultimate goal becomes a shameful embarrassment? What are the real-world consequences if we don't play fair? Are there any, in a culture where the only thing that matters is winning?
We are just a dozen days now from the US Election. There is a 'mute-button' debate tonight; I hope it goes well.
Portugal is in the midst of a serious and sharp increase in the case count for Covid-19, and reports a record 3,270 new cases today. A few days ago, Portugal blew past the one hundred thousand mark, and has risen from fifty-first to forty-third place on the table of nations.
