Call to the pen
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Boston Red Sox cheating scandal being swept aside

By David Hill

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS - JANUARY 15: From left, Red Sox Owner John Henry, Chairman Tom Werner, CEO Sam Kennedy, and Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom attend a press conference addressing the departure of Alex Cora as manager of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on January 15, 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts. A MLB investigation concluded that Cora was involved in the Houston Astros sign stealing operation in 2017 while he was the bench coach. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS - JANUARY 15: From left, Red Sox Owner John Henry, Chairman Tom Werner, CEO Sam Kennedy, and Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom attend a press conference addressing the departure of Alex Cora as manager of the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park on January 15, 2020 in Boston, Massachusetts. A MLB investigation concluded that Cora was involved in the Houston Astros sign stealing operation in 2017 while he was the bench coach. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images) /
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Remember when the Boston Red Sox were the subject of their own cheating scandal? Major League Baseball may be hoping that you forgot.

Although it feels like a lifetime ago, it was just a few short weeks ago when AstroGate broke. The Houston Astros were hammered for their cheating ways, with A.J. Hinch, Jeff Luhnow, Carlos Beltran, and Alex Cora all getting the axe. Along the way, the Boston Red Sox were also investigated for their transgressions and unscrupulous ways of gaining an advantage.

Initially, the results of Major League Baseball’s investigation were expected in February. And then, at the end of the month. Then definitely sometime in March.

Now, everyone has something else to focus on. The global pandemic has forced all gatherings over 50 people to be banned, with some areas under an outright lockdown. Baseball will be back, but at some nebulous time in the future. Will it be Memorial Day Weekend? The Fourth of July? The trade deadline? No one knows.

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That Red Sox cheating scandal? It is forgotten now, lost to the sands of time and the vagrancies of the modern attention span. That supposedly ongoing investigation? Likely suspended given everything else happening.

And frankly, that is probably what Rob Manfred and the league wanted in the first place. The Astros scandal begat the Red Sox. From the Red Sox? Who knows where the next cheaters would be, with the Yankees being mentioned as another team that would possibly be implicated. This was one rabbit hole that the league truly did not want to go down.

Now the league has the out it has wanted. Time does a great job of fading memories, and the longer the fans go without baseball, the more they will want to focus on the action on the diamond more than any ghosts of the past. Those transgressions will be swept aside, only to resurface when someone randomly recalls that the Astros were not the only ones to have been cheating. But at that point, no one will care anymore.

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The investigation into the Boston Red Sox cheating scandal is theoretically ongoing. In reality, it has been swept aside into the dustbin of history.

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