Perhaps one of the most common and often frustrating exercises in human thought is to play what if? In other words, what if something else had happened in the past instead of what actually did. For example, a lot of people wonder what if Donald Trump didn’t win the presidency. In the end, it’s something of a fool’s errand, unless you own a DeLorean that can take you to the past.
That said, there are a few people in Major League Baseball that are currently thinking what if. Most of those people are fans of or players for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who in 2017 lost the World Series to the Houston Astros in seven games. Of course, that’s pretty much standard fare for any sports fan or athlete, who often ruminate how life might have been different if say, John Starks had hit that 3 at the end of Game 6 of the 1994 NBA Finals. This is part of the DNA of sports, the acknowledgement that it could have ended differently.
But the Dodgers’ angst is perhaps a bit more specific, and perhaps fair. That’s because the Astros, the team that beat them in the World Series, have been now officially punished by the commissioner’s office for stealing signs throughout the 2017 and part of the 2018 seasons. Without going too far into the abyss, Houston used cameras to see catchers’ signs to the pitcher, then relayed this to their batters by banging on trash cans. This violated baseballs rules around stealing signs, which basically say it’s illegal to use technology to do it. So if a base runner eyes a call from second base, it’s fine. If someone uses a secret camera in the outfield, not so much. It’s all part of the oddity of baseball, where history and tradition are both its greatest blessing and its imminent curse.
With the commissioner’s report, both Houston’s GM Jeff Luhnow and its manager AJ Hinch were suspended from the sport for a year. To add insult to injury, Astros team owner Jim Crane immediately fired them both, even though the report inferred the crime was essentially done by players. The team also lost its top two draft picks for the next two years and were fined $5 million, which in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t seem all that bad, at least in baseball dollars.
What the report did not require was for Houston to surrender its World Series Title, it’s only one in history. Which means that Los Angeles will not have any claim to the victory. Interestingly, they lost the following year to the Red Sox, who are also embroiled in a sign stealing scandal.
Which, of course, gets to the crux of the issue. And that is not whether or not the Commissioner levied a tough enough penalty against the Astros, or if it was against the right people. In any sport, and organization really, there’s always a cost/benefit analysis of whether it’s worth it to bypass rules and norms. At least from baseball’s perspective, they hope this changes that calculus – although I have doubts.
The real challenge is dealing with the changing nature of technology and innovation in sport, a space where we expect humans, not machines, to determine the outcome. It’s something that is in no way specific to baseball. Sports like NASCAR and cycling live it every day, both largely standardizing the cars or bikes their athletes can use, trying to ensure victory comes from human prowess, not who has a better ride. Distance running is trying to figure out if Nike’s Vaporflys should be allowed, with athletes seemingly running 4 to 5 percent faster with them on. Those may be specific to equipment, but it still hits at the heart of the quandary. The world is changing, and sport may increasingly have a difficult time operating as it did before the age of the Internet, amongst other things.
Now, does that mean that everyone should be able to steal everything, something akin to those who argue we live in a post-plagiarism society, where all information is free for public sharing in a landscape of 1’s and 0’s? I wouldn’t go that far, especially if I want to ever speak to my academic colleagues again. But I do think that if baseball wants to keep teams from stealing signs, they may have to rethink how signs happen in the first place – perhaps something a bit more encoded than a guy holding down two fingers. If technology is the problem, perhaps it’s also the solution. What that means, I don’t know. I only know that when it comes to the future, technology almost always wins. And rarely has to ask what if.
Keith Strudler is the Director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on Twitter at @KeithStrudler
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