Texas Rangers fans let Houston Astros hear they haven’t forgotten cheating scandal
Not everyone unloaded a chorus of boos on the Houston Astros on Friday night at Globe Life Field.
Many Astros fans were in the crowd.
But just about everyone else, it seemed, voiced their displeasure at the Astros, who were playing in front of Texas Rangers fans for the first time since the infamous sign-stealing scandal was uncovered before the 2020 season.
Outside of Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium, where fans felt their teams were most adversely affected by the Astros’ cheating ways in 2017, Globe Life Field might rank third as the most hostile environment.
The boos began earlier in the week as the Rangers promoted the three-game Astros series while New York Yankees were in town. Some of them, but not all, were likely from Yankees fans.
Booing started Friday before the 7:07 p.m. first pitch as public-address announcer read the Astros’ starting lineup. Second baseman Jose Altuve, third baseman Alex Bregman, first baseman Yuli Gurriel and shortstop Carlos Correa took the brunt of boos.
Altuve, the 2017 American League MVP, heard more of it as the first batter of the game, and the crowd roared with approval after Kyle Gibson struck him out.
Altuve, Bregman, Gurriel and Correa were members of the 2017 team that beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games to win the World Series. Rangers manager Chris Woodward was the Dodgers’ third-base coach, and has said in the past that the Astros’ sign-stealing scheme still irks him.
MLB investigators found evidence that the Astros illegally accessed a center-field camera in their video-replay room during games and discovered a formula to decipher teams’ signals from the catcher to the pitcher in real time.
The information was relayed from the room to the dugout and then to the batter by banging on a trash can. One bang indicated an off-speed pitch, two bangs were used for a fastball.
Houston used the scheme throughout the postseason, MLB found, but the Astros were not stripped of their championship and no players were punished even though the cheating was said to be driven by the players.
General manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch were suspended one year, and the Astros fired both the day the investigation’s results were announced in January 2020.
Bench coach Alex Cora, who had left to become manager of the Boston Red Sox, was fired by the Red Sox, and Carlos Beltran, a player on the team, was fired as manager by the New York Mets without ever working a game.
