I haven't yet written about the Astros scandal because I don't know exactly what to say. The one thing I absolutely won't say is that they didn't cheat. They so obviously did, they so obviously had a system in place to steal signs, relay them to batters, apparently using drums and other things. They absoluteyl did this. There's no defense there.
Where is the defense, then? Well, it probably resides in the same two arguments I made fun of and berated Patriots fans for using for years after Spygate (more on the overall comparison to the mindset of Patriots fans shortly). The first was 'well, everyone does it!' and the second (and in this case more interesting one) is 'it didn't really help!'. Both have always been such hollow defenses when it was Bostonians and Massholes making them in defense of their team that was caught red-handed stealing signals.
I used to always think "how can you use the 'everyone did it' excuse... that's like the first lesson we teach kids is that that is not an excuse!". But now? Well, I have to say that I think probably a lot of teams do something a bit untoward, if not outright cheating like the Astros.
The second excuse always grated me because well, if Bill Belichick was such a genius, why the hell did he do this sign stealing scheme. Clearly, it helped. Well, with teh Astros, we actually have tangible proof that it might not have mattered. The Astros were across the board better on the road in 2017 than at home, and at least in the current iteration of the scandal, it seems their scheme was limited to home games. The Astros hit, slugged, OBPed and everything else better on the road. They even had a lower 'chase rate' (the rate which you swing at pitches out of the strike zone). There's no logical reason for this. You should do a lot better, you would think, if you knew it was a fastball or a off-speed pitch coming. Somehow, the Astros didn't.
All this said, I do want to mention the one area where I do think I am different than Patriots fans. Yes, I think the scandal is overblown, and likely all teams were doing it, and it didn't seem to have a tangible impact, but at the end, it does make me feel a bit worse about the Astros and being a fan of them. It sucks knowing we cheated (even if others did). It somewhat ruins a whole lot of amazing memories in the 2017 series - specifically that amazing, hauntingly mesmerizingly beautiful Game 5 win against the Dodgers. I won't stop loving the fact I watched my team win a World Series, but I do love it ever slightly less.
That one simple fact - that having my team uncovered as have cheated does impact my love of the team - does separate me from Patriots fans, which only became more blindingly subservient to their team after Spygate (and then Deflategate and every other Gate), using the fact they were caught cheating as a rallying cry. And maybe a lot of Astros fans will do the same, but not me.
Where is the defense, then? Well, it probably resides in the same two arguments I made fun of and berated Patriots fans for using for years after Spygate (more on the overall comparison to the mindset of Patriots fans shortly). The first was 'well, everyone does it!' and the second (and in this case more interesting one) is 'it didn't really help!'. Both have always been such hollow defenses when it was Bostonians and Massholes making them in defense of their team that was caught red-handed stealing signals.
I used to always think "how can you use the 'everyone did it' excuse... that's like the first lesson we teach kids is that that is not an excuse!". But now? Well, I have to say that I think probably a lot of teams do something a bit untoward, if not outright cheating like the Astros.
The second excuse always grated me because well, if Bill Belichick was such a genius, why the hell did he do this sign stealing scheme. Clearly, it helped. Well, with teh Astros, we actually have tangible proof that it might not have mattered. The Astros were across the board better on the road in 2017 than at home, and at least in the current iteration of the scandal, it seems their scheme was limited to home games. The Astros hit, slugged, OBPed and everything else better on the road. They even had a lower 'chase rate' (the rate which you swing at pitches out of the strike zone). There's no logical reason for this. You should do a lot better, you would think, if you knew it was a fastball or a off-speed pitch coming. Somehow, the Astros didn't.
All this said, I do want to mention the one area where I do think I am different than Patriots fans. Yes, I think the scandal is overblown, and likely all teams were doing it, and it didn't seem to have a tangible impact, but at the end, it does make me feel a bit worse about the Astros and being a fan of them. It sucks knowing we cheated (even if others did). It somewhat ruins a whole lot of amazing memories in the 2017 series - specifically that amazing, hauntingly mesmerizingly beautiful Game 5 win against the Dodgers. I won't stop loving the fact I watched my team win a World Series, but I do love it ever slightly less.
That one simple fact - that having my team uncovered as have cheated does impact my love of the team - does separate me from Patriots fans, which only became more blindingly subservient to their team after Spygate (and then Deflategate and every other Gate), using the fact they were caught cheating as a rallying cry. And maybe a lot of Astros fans will do the same, but not me.
