Houston Astros: Death threats to Reddick and Fiers equal degeneracy

Death threats to Reddick and Fiers equal degeneracy

So the Astros weren’t exactly forthcoming or straightforward with their not-quite-apologies for the Astro Intelligence Agency and the mischief it caused? As Felix Unger loved to say in The Odd Couple, let it be on their heads. They have to live with the negative image it casts further upon them than the AIA does. They have to live with having further poisoned baseball’s integrity.

Yes, they carried sign-stealing from simple on-field gamesmanship to elaborate off-field-based electronic cheating. Yes, that cheating stacked the deck against opponents who had to add even further to their mental game burdens against them if those opponents actually did have a clear line that they were up to something.

But even they don’t deserve death wishes or death threats upon their lives or those of their children. It’s neither funny nor merely foolish to wish death upon a player or cancer upon a player’s children. “Decadent” and “degenerate” don’t begin to describe it accurately.

More from Houston Astros

• Julio Rodriguez doing it all for Mariners, including playing peacemaker against Astros
• MLB Trade Deadline: AL West roundup with Rangers, Angels, Astros wishlist, A’s and Mariners for sale
• Grading Dana Brown and the Houston Astros front office at the season’s midway point
• Houston Astros: Houston, we have a Martin Maldonado problem
• Stock Up, Stock Down: Red Sox, Cardinals, Blue Jays and Astros

Threatening Josh Reddick’s children, or threatening him and his teammates is bad enough if it’s coming from other than Astro fans. No fans in baseball are more heartsick over this cheating scandal than Astro fans, unless they’re Red Sox fans heartsick over the Red Sox Replay Room Reconnaissance Ring upon which Manfred has yet to pass judgment and sentence. Do you really want to know if even one Astro fan wished death to Reddick or his mates or cancer upon Reddick’s or anyone else’s children?

And Mike Fiers doesn’t deserve death wishes or death threats for being nothing more than what he really is—the only man in baseball willing, at last, to put his name on the record exposing the techno-cheaters, after numerous previous complaints, from teams to the commissioner, or from players to writers without going on the record, went unanswered or uninvestigated.

What Fiers is to electronic cheating, Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson was when he managed the Reds briefly, the only man in baseball willing to stand up to the rampant gambling-inspired game tanking that ran amok until the Black Sox scandal blew it open and inspired the invention of the very job Manfred now has.

Mathewson only tried to have the most corrupt player of that era and the game’s history, first baseman Hal Chase, thrown out of baseball permanently. (Which did happen in due course.) He never wished cancer upon Chase’s children or death to Chase himself.

If Fiers never once wished any particular harm upon the Astros other than beating their brains out in baseball games, there’s no legitimate call to wish harm or death upon any or all Astros, either. They cheated. They stole games and maybe even a World Series title. No matter how deeply you love the game as I do, that’s not even close to the same as selling atomic secrets to an enemy of the United States or setting a personal adversary up to be murdered.

Decry the Astros all you wish for what they and the AIA did. Denounce the 2018-19 Red Sox for their replay room reconnaissance ring—operated while Astrogate co-conspirator Alex Cora managed them, including to a World Series title—from morning until the end of the day.

Ding Manfred’s lack of Astro punishment beyond a seven-figure fine, or suspending a now-former general manager and a now-former manager, to the full extent of your rhetorical ability. Rant your head off about how the very thing that was meant to enhance our game, the technology wave of the past decade, fell into the hands of cheaters who figured out how to exploit and abuse it. That’s your right, and mine.

Why, maybe even start a campaign to encourage if not insist other teams have a little mad fun with the Astrogate aftermath. The Yankees’ Staten Island farm team plans to give away free miniature trash cans to fans attending a game against the Astros’ Tri-City Valley Cats. I hereby see and raise.

Remember the cartoon character Top Cat? His calling card was to bang a pair of garbage can lids to round his gang up. Demand all Astro opponents hand the first 25,000 fans into the park when the Astros come to town a free pair of garbage can lids to bang while the Astros are at bat—or, offer half-price refunds to any fans showing up at the park with their own trash can lids to bang.

That’d be a little snarky. And a lot of mad fun. And, a lot less degenerate way to send the message that their cheating was poisonous.