Stealing Signs - No, not freeway signs

The late Eddie Guerrero said, "if you're not cheating, you not trying.  Joe Montana, when asked about the allegations of cheating by the New England Patriots modified that statement.  "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying."  Cheating runs rampant in sports, particularly at the professional level.  The stakes are higher.

Many fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers are saying that Major League Baseball should declare them the winners of the 2017 and 2018 World Series titles, given that both Houston and Boston cheated by stealing signs.  Is that realistic?  No.  The Los Angeles City Council has more important things to focus on, rather than passing a meaningless resolution calling on MLB to award those titles to the Dodgers.

The Commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred debunked that resolution.  There is no proof that the Dodgers would have won without the stealing of signs.  However, what MLB has done is not sufficient.

The punishments meted out to the Astros were a $5 million fine, loss of some draft picks and the team's general manager and manager were suspended from baseball for one year.  The players were left with their rings, their bonuses and their status as champions.

What should MLB do?

1.  Vacate the title.  Declare there to have been no World Series champion in 2017.
2.  Fine every Astro who appeared as a batter in the 2017 post-season.
3.  Suspend every Astro who appeared as a batter in the 2017 post-season for at least one game in the upcoming 2020 regular season.

As to the 2018 World Series, we need to wait until the investigation is over as to whether or not the Red Sox cheated.  If they did, then a similar series of punishments should be handed down.

I find it interesting that baseball will not hesitate to punish individual players for using performance enhancing substances, domestic violence and other allegations of criminal behavior.  The difference is that such things are individual behavior.  When players collude to cheat as a team, the Commissioner refuses to take action against said players.  Why?

2020's first Thursday Thoughts

In March of 2016 I wrote (I was going to use the word penned, but I only use pens to sign tax documents and take notes in the office these days) a blog that used Steven Seagal movie titles to illustrate just a few of the flaws in the character of Donald Trump.  It bears revisiting.

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There are only a few sports where an athlete can achieve perfection.  Golf has the hole in one, but that's just one shot. No one has ever recorded a perfect round in golf.  Gymnastics has the perfect 10 and it was so unexpected, the first time it was done in the Summer Olympic Games, it looked like this on the scoreboard.

The scoreboard was configured to display 9.9 as the highest score.  So the perfect 10 of Nadia Comaneci at the 1976 Montreal Games looked like a 1.0.

Bowling has the perfect game.  12 strikes.  300.  In July of 1982, Glenn Allison took that to a new level, rolling three perfect games back to back.  The first 900 series.  But the American Bowling Congress (ABC) refused to sanction the achievement.  They claimed the lanes were "blocked" allowing players an easier route to high scores.  You can read the details of the ABC's denial here.  BTW, the ABC (now known as the USBC) was wrong.  All of the other bowlers on that pair of lanes that night, and in fact the entire league; had subpar scores.  If the lanes were so easy, 300 games should have been plentiful.

Any golfer has a chance at a hole in one.  Any bowler can shoot a 300 game.  I had 2 of them. although not in sanctioned competition.  Few of us ordinary folk can go out and achieve a perfect 10 on the uneven bars, let alone on in any gymnastics event.

Then there is the perfect game in Major League Baseball (MLB).  MLB dates back to 1876.  In the 143 seasons to date, there have been 23 perfect games pitched.  No hits, no walks, no errors.  It hasn't been done since 2012.

Don Larsen threw a perfect game in game 5 of the 1956 World Series.  Pitching for the NY Yankees he needed only 97 pitches to retire 27 Brooklyn Dodger batters in order.  Only one of the Dodgers (Pee Wee Reese) managed to get Larsen to throw three pitches outside the strike zone in a single at-bat.

Larsen was a mediocre pitcher based on his career stats.  A won-loss record of 81 wins and 91 losses, a career Earned Run Average of 3.78.  But he did something that no one before or since has managed to equal.

Don Larsen died at the age of 90 on New Year's Day.  RIP.

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