Scandal. Without Punishment.

Sports are a great place to draw on for metaphors for life. But in some specific and unfortunate cases, it is definitely not where you want to be taking your heroes from. The Houston Astros and their 2017 World Series Scandal is one very prominent example. Cheating your way to a World Series in one way is quite impressive because it has to be so hard to do it and not get caught. But more importantly, it is so sad and devastating. Sports are supposed to be unifying and a good relaxing time. When you get paid more than the average hard-working American and then you decide to cheat it is just absolutely disgusting.

The Astros are particularly disgusting because not a single player faced any punishment or backlash for the scandal. The only punishment that was handed out was the firing of manager, A.J. Hinch, and general manager Jeff Luhnow. The Astros were also fined 5 million dollars and had to for-fit their first and second-round draft picks of 2020 and 2021. However, Alex Cora the Red Sox's manager as well as the Met's manager Carlos Beltran were fired as a result of the roles that they played in the cheating. The Red Sox and Mets ended up paying a higher price than the Astros did. How is that even remotely fair or okay? The entire team got world series rings and were celebrated like champions. However, champion is one world that should never be in the same sentence as the Houston Astros. Period.

Let's take a look back at the last time that a scandal of this proportion happened. In 1919, the Black Sox Sandal occurred. For those who are unaware, the Black Sox Scandal was a Major-League Baseball game-fixing scandal in which 8 members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series against the Reds, for money. All 8 members who were accused were eventually acquitted in a public trial in 1921, however, Judge Landis permanently banned all 8 members from professional baseball. Eventually, this punishment was extended to include a ban from the Hall of Fame. This is how scandal should be handled. If you do something dishonest and cheat in the professional league, you deserve a punishment of equal magnitude. However, the Astros got through the whole scandal with nothing more than a few scratches, only the coaches and managers got punished because of the cheating. However, players should have been punished in addition to the managers and coaches. This was not an either or situation it should have been an and situation.

The Astros cheating scandal is more than just about cheating. This cheating put the whole Astros team at an unfair advantage to the rest of the league. Through cheating, the players inflated their stats. Due to their inflated stats, the players were able to get more money and better deals. If the MLB were staying with tradition and precedent that was set with the Black Sox Scandal then the players would have been suspended for at least if not longer, or potentially banned from baseball. In addition, they would have lost their World Series Championship win, how does it count as a win if you cheated to get to the top of the podium.

If we are willing to let cheaters get off scot-free then what does that say about us as a society. Sports is supposed to be a great environment and a fun place to learn life lessons, but man the Astros are doing the exact opposite. All I have to say is thank the heavens that they did not win the World Series this year.

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