“The rules are what make a game a game.”
This statement, made by Fay Vincent, Major League Baseball Commissioner from 1989 to 1992, serves as the foundation for an examination into a cheating scandal that while several years past, still reverberates through baseball today.
Now, just as teams suit up for Major League Baseball’s postseason, PBS
PBS
The documentary takes an in-depth look at the Houston Astros cheating scandal, the fallout, and how it affects the game today.
The 90-minute film presents new information and exclusive interviews with former MLB insiders, including some associated with the Astros organization.
Ben Reiter serves not only as narrator and investigator, but also as the conscience of the documentary.
Reiter is in a unique position to offer commentary on the situation, given that as a Sports Illustrated staffer he was embedded with the team and wrote the infamous 2014 cover story predicting that the team would win the 2017 World Series.
He then wrote his 2018 book Astroball, and followed that up with a podcast series entitled The Edge: Houston Astros about the sign-stealing scandal, during which he ruminated about his role in exalting the team before all of the revelations about cheating came to light.
In The Astros Edge, Reiter spends copious amounts of time probing the 2017 team with former general manager Jeff Luhnow, who previously worked on Wall Street, as Ludnow explains how the team went from the worst team in baseball to the most dominant club of the era via a hyper-competitive approach that relied heavily on data.
Luhnow reveals how he stacked the Astros front office with a cast of eccentric characters who relied on the principles of the Moneyball model, showing just how the Astros took that thinking to the extreme, using the evaluation of player Jose Altuve as an example.
SI’s Tom Verducci, who’s analyzed baseball for four decades, breaks down the numerical scrutiny that has proliferated all sports, particularly baseball, in ways that upset traditionalists, mainly because it takes the human factors of players out of the equation.
Verducci is quick to point out that all teams use technology to some extent, however, the Astros invested heavily in it, more so than other teams.
To further this discussion, and add a never-before-seen behind-the-scenes perspective, Antonio Padilla, a former manager in the Astros’ video department from 2016-22, describes how bench coach Alex Cora asked him to install a TV monitor near the home dugout at the Astro’s Minute Maid Park. The monitor was later used to decode signs from the opposing catcher and relay them to Astros hitters as they stood at the plate.
The hitters were then alerted as to what type of pitch was coming via a bang on a trashcan from an Astros insider.
Padilla admits that he knew what was going on was wrong, but as a lowly employee felt he was just supporting what the coaches and players had asked him to do.
He also reveals that he keep quiet, hoping the team would win the World Series, because of the potential of a monetary payout as part of the team. It worked — when the Astros took the title, Padilla was given an amount that proves to be just one of the most shocking revelations in the documentary; the team voted to bestow on Padilla a full postseason share in the 2017 World Series, for a total of $450,000, which was ten times Padilla’s regular salary. Padilla admits that to him this was a ‘life-changing’ amount of money.
Also contained in the documentary is a discussion with Tony Adams, a devout Astros fan who created an app specifically to catalogue the trashcan banging incidents, in an effort to show the actual level of cheating. The numbers Adams presents are staggering. What’s surprising is Adams revelation about how feels toward the Astros today, given what he now knows.
What’s also staggering is there are no comments contained in the documentary from current baseball commissioner Rob Manfred, any Astros players or the players union. These entities clearly chose not to participate in the film.
At the time, after the initial article by The Athletic in 2019 that exposed the cheating, Manfred said that his office would conduct their own investigation into the allegations, but what followed was the Commissioner giving immunity to the Astros players, which resulted in few consequences for those who carried out the scheme.
As Vincent explains, the role of the Commissioner is very confusing as it’s to police the very people he works for, which only seems to complicate matters. Exactly how is essentially an employee supposed to hold his employer accountable when it affects operations, revenue and possibly salary?
Ludnow was let go at that time by the team, and where he’s ended up is an interesting postscript to the story. He still continues to deny any knowledge or awareness of the cheating as it happened.
Other team personnel were fired as well — Astros Manager A.J. Hinch got the ax in 2020, and Cora, who was with the Boston Red Sox at the time the scandal broke, was suspended by MLB for the 2020 season.
Hinch is now manager of the Detroit Tigers, while Cora is back with the Red Sox, having returned in 2021.
There were some fees levied in the wake of the scandal as well, but given the amount of revenues it was just a very small fraction of that money.
Vincent isn’t shy about the harsh punishment he says he would have imposed on the players had he been in charge at the time, as he expresses in the documentary.
What the film also points out is that as long as baseball has been around, the fact that opposing teams have been trying to decipher each other’s signs is acceptable, and this has been done for as long as the game has been played, but using technology to do it is not ok, on any level.
And while no one will ever really know if the cheating gave the Astros any concrete edge, they will have their outcomes during that time questioned forever. This sentiment is expressed not only by Reiter but also by his SI colleague Stephanie Apstein.
To this end, Reiter isn’t coy about reflecting on how he feels about his possible role in the scandal, saying that when the cheating was first revealed in 2019, it, “shocked me and it upended much of the mythology around the Astros which I had helped create.”
Overall The Astros Edge offers more than just a surface level exploration of what transpired in 2017 and for viewers it’s clear that even if you think you know the story, there will most likely be something that will surprise you in this layered account.
With the Astros now in the playoffs yet again, some five years after their extreme efforts to win at all costs, can fans ever let their outright cheating in 2017 go? Probably not. Will the boos that reign down on the team when they’re in opposing stadiums stop any time soon, even though there are only three players on the 2023 roster from 2017? Doesn’t seem likely. Can baseball ever recover from this scandal? That’s for the fans to determine, and in this case, the old adage, ‘only time will tell,’ seems to be more than applicable.
But if The Astros Edge does anything, it could make the outrage last just a bit longer.
‘The Astros Edge: Triumph and Scandal in Major League Baseball’ is available via PBS.org or the PBS app.
Read the full article here