homegame

This nonsensical position came to my mind as a first reaction to baseball's Great Astros Videotape Scandal, an event that has likely ended the careers of managers A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora and led to the usual unhallelujah chorus of the stuck-up scolds who seem to comprise an unhealthily large percentage of the horsehide pundit class.  A World Series winner cheated! Oh, woe. Won't somebody think of the children who weren't allowed to stay up late enough to catch pitch one of the 2017 Fall Classic?

Yet the very rule issued by the Commissioner's Office outlawing real time video sign stealing made it clear that low-tech sign stealing by use of uniformed personnel's five senses was perfectly fine. That's not cheating, just more of the game's roguish, colorful history, like ogling women in the stands from the bullpen.

Throughout said history, baseball has let a LOT of cheating slide with only the mildest of penalties and no blemish at all on the reputations of the cheaters. The spitball and doctoring the ball by artificial means in general were outlawed in 1920. Gaylord Perry is an honored member of the Hall of Game. Cork a bat? If the ump catches it, you get ejected and likely draw a suspension. A season-long suspension? No way. Boys will be boys after all.

No, there have been only three cheating scandals in all baseball where the sport has responded with stern and strict justice untempered by mercy. First came the Black Sox. Perfectly understandable there, no sport can have competitors trying to lose on purpose. Even there, NFL and NBA team managements can create rosters seeking dismal seasons in pursuit of draft picks and draw little more than furrowed brows.

The second baseball scandal to draw an actual serious response from its management was the PED use explosion in the '90s and early '00s. Again, this is perfectly understandable. It played into our society's many irrational attitude towards DRUGS. But it also was a reaction to a demonstrable fact. PED use had a significant impact on player performance, and a significantly unfair one. The better a batter or pitcher was in the first place, the more benefit he got from PED use. Mark McGwire would've hit a great many homers no matter what. Seventy in a season? Probably not. Barry Bonds was the best all-around player in the sport. Then he started PEDs, and he made said sport a joke.

By common consent, including that of the player's union, this could not go on, and so the current testing and punishment regime has been around since the '00s. Only a cynic would note baseball's recent decision to physically alter the ball itself to allow for more of the home runs lost in the PED crackdown, so consider it duly noted.

Now we have this. I know the real reason the punishments dealt to the Astros were so severe (except for owner Jim Crane of course, owners are never responsible for anything bad in sports) is that the video sign stealing defied a 2017 edict by commissioner Rob Manfred, as weak tyrants cannot defiance by those safely beneath them in the pecking order. Yet Major League Baseball has yet to issue the most cogent defense of its sort-of-draconian stance. Video sign stealing was too efficient a means of cheating. Like PEDs, it gave the already advantaged player more advantage still.

Here's an oversimplified analogy. If you or I stepped into the batter's box to face Clayton Kershaw and knew what pitch he was going to throw, it would do us no good whatsoever. We still couldn't touch it. If a .200 hitting benchwarmer got the same break, he might improve to the .250 level, which ain't hay. But if Alex Bregman or Jose Altuve receives the same information, we move to another level. They become .400 hitters with power. It's insider trading for All-Stars.

So in one sense, the steep falls taken by Cora, Hinch and Co. are justified. In another, they are not. When some cheating is treated with a wink, all forms of cheating will be explored. Baseball is not populated by grown men playing a little boy's game. It is and always has been populated with psychopathically competitive men playing a cutthroat competitive sport for the highest of stakes. To expect such people not to blow past rules, let alone norms, is insane.

Would Ty Cobb have participated in a video replay scheme? Let's ask him. He's over there in the corner of Hell's dugout sharpening his spikes. Had the technology been available, Leo Durocher would've bugged the pitching rubber at the Polo Grounds.

No, the only way to prevent baseball cheating is to not put temptation in the way of baseball people in the first place. The best solution to video replay surveillance is to get rid of replay as part of the sport. This will never happen because once a sport lets replay in, it stays there forever. It makes all sports worse for spectators, but that doesn't count. 

The most practical solution, which I've seen proposed by others, is to not let ballclubs have access to the replay system. Let managers base their challenges to calls on the evidence of their own eyes alone, so that only egregiously blown calls would draw them. You know, the way replay is supposed to function.

This won't happen either. Baseball is planning to move boldly in the other direction, because baseball's propensity for the wrong move is as old as sign stealing.

Before too long, the home plate umpire calling balls and strikes will be replaced by a computerized electronic ump whose calls allegedly will be devoid of human error. I've seen Angel Hernandez work many games behind the plate, so I understand the motive here, but this is a clear case of worsening by improvement.

Shortly after the electronic, computerized home plate umpire is installed, it will be hacked. Might be hacked by a demented fan, an Albanian thief, or some low level analytics employee in a team's office, but hacked it will be. And baseball will long for the days of the late Eric Gregg's strike zone.

Don't think that could happen? Do you follow the business news much? Or for that matter, the political news?