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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

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+

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Looking back on it, I think that I should have suspected that the Astros were cheating just based on watching Altuve and the way that he attacked fast balls that were way out of the zone. I saw him once hit a ball that was head high and outside and he crushed it. I remember that I marveled at how he could take a 95+ fastball head high fastball and hit the damned thing over 400+ feet. That should have got me thinking. If you are not sitting on that pitch there is no way you could even begin to hit it.

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An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

Astros had the best walk and K ratios in MLB. By far.

Knowing what's coming doesn't mean you'll square it up. But it does mean you can be highly, highly selective and odds of contact will go way up.

Rumor is, up to 8 teams were involved in electronic cheating. MLB has to put out publicly everything they have on everything. They've told us PEDs are not a problem, which is bullshit, because they won't store samples for later analysis for when the science catches up on the testing. Appparently, ADHD is rampant among baseball players. Who knew? Also apparently, foreign substances on pitchers' caps are rampant.

So naturally I'm going to assume this latest investigation is also a bit disingenuous.

The whole sport is tainted in several ways. How am I supposed to keep enjoying it?

Just understand that as long as the sport has existed that MANY teams and players have been cheating. Technology just changes some of the ways it's done.

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

The Sox will win the right way. Just like in 2005.

2005.

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For me, it's crossed the line. Knowing certain facts on how MLB addresses these issues. They consistently attempt to sweep stuff under the rug.

"It's all fixed".

I guess. I hope I feel that way. Odds are I will.

Yeah this is very bad.

I don’t think adderall use is a big deal tho. I know it’s synthesized methamphetamine, but it’s still legal with a prescription.

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Totally agree. I don't see why MLB is so appalled by this scandal when this type of thing started with a coach leaning over the dugout railing and seeing something, and then moved to a team official sitting in center filed with a pair of binoculars, and has now arrived at a team official watching a camera feed. It's all just different ways of doing the same thing that probably has been going on for over a century.

It's illegal and should be punished, but the punishment meted out does not appear to be proportional to the crime.

I do not think a coach noticing that "hey every time the pitching coach over in the other dugout touches his cap, a fastball is thrown," and using binoculars and cameras to blatantly steal signs are even close to the same thing.

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What about whistling the signs? Is that cool? People did videos on that too but it's not getting the attention of the trash can.

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If the whistling didn't involve a camera or somebody in the bleachers with a lens, I would have no problem with it.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Z5FRPPogM

Well, it was the Astros at home, so it probably did involve videos.

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It's how the signs were got. Whistling is fine if the signs were stolen within the confines of the playing field and from the people involved in the game.

The line isn't blurry.

The timing would indicate that a camera was used to get the signs in the first place.
that's pretty incriminating. They got what they deserved.

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If sign stealing is illegal it should be punished regardless of how the signs were stolen. Other than the fact that you could conceivably steal more signs with a camera than you could with the naked eye, I don't see how using a camera makes it worse, and even in that scenario you should be punished for the extent of your sign stealing and not necessarily the use of the camera.

Also, the Astros players didn't seem to think they were crossing some forbidden line because they were doing it openly and notoriously, and had to know this was going to come out sooner as opposed to later.

MLB tacitly allowed sign stealing for decades, and some around the game, like Hawk Harrelson, even celebrated it. Therefore, while it should be allowed to punish teams for stealing signs, it shouldn't slam teams like it did the Astros, at least not initially.

Stealing signs has always been part of the game. It's the stealth, electronic, in the moment, alerting of the batter that goes over the line.

Pitchers and catchers will adjust to some sign system that is more difficult to steal. Or maybe they will set up to see if the batter's are being fed stolen signs...then plunk a couple guys.

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Can't agree...there is a difference between a runner on second relaying the signs to the batter, and someone not on the field or dugout using a camera to relay electronically to the dugout. The only similarity is that in both cases, someone needs to decipher the codes.

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MLB put out a memo letting all teams know there would be dire consequences should they be caught using electronic means to cheat and steal signs. The Astros continued to do so. They made their bed, they can lie in it.

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Baseball fans make me laugh. "Cheating has always been fine, but this new type of cheating is crossing a line"

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Trying to steal signs was never about cheating.

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It's not really any different than this football analogy: If the Colts ran the ball any time Peyton Manning yelled "Omaha," and the other team's players picked up on that, that would be much different than a coach being tied in to the Colt's headsets and hearing the actual play and relaying it to the defense.

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Sign stealing is not mentioned in the MLB rulebook. There have been policies put in place that ban the use of electronics to steal signs.

So a runner signaling to a batter is fine. What the Astros did is not.

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A real-time camera from center field was fed to the dugout / clubhouse. This isn't complicated...

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Nope. It's limited to on the field with on field participants. With their brains and their senses. I don't get why this is so hard to comprehend. The line is NOT blurry.

If the MLB put out a memo telling teams not to use electronic means to steal signs before the Astros embarked on their scheme and the Astros did it anyway, than I don't have much sympathy for them. I just think there's no getting around the fact that whether you're doing it on the field, whether you're doing it with binoculars in the stands, or whether you're using a camera, you're doing the exact same thing. You're observing something that's taking place in plain view in front of tens of thousands of people and trying to detect a pattern. You're not hacking into a private trove of information or into some sort of secure communication just because you're using a camera. What you're recording is taking place on the playing field in front of everyone. If the rules allow for one form of sign stealing and not another, I don't think they're consistent and should be changed (they both should be outlawed).

What's more, rank and file baseball people don't seem to respect this on the field/off the field distinction. The Astros and Red Sox were doing it openly and not acting like they were committing some sort of mortal sin. Compare that to steroids, which players by and large used in private and then lied about later. I'm sure that if the 1951 Giants were stealing signs from the stands, the late 80's and early 90's White Sox were stealing signs from the stands, and the Astros and Red Sox were doing it with a camera, there were several other teams doing it throughout history. It just seems odd that this has become an appalling act now.

At the December 1961 Winter Meetings, the National League banned the use of a "mechanical device" to steal signs.[7] The use of electronic equipment is not specifically forbidden by MLB rules, but in 2001, Sandy Alderson, while serving as executive vice president for baseball operations of MLB, issued a memorandum stating that teams cannot use electronic equipment to communicate with each other during games, especially for the purpose of stealing signs.

The line is not blurry.

I'm not necessarily saying the line is blurry. I'm saying the line doesn't make a lot of sense, and many people who have been a part of major league baseball and are currently a part of major league baseball seem to agree.