Astros’ apologies have turned Choke City into Cheat City
The Houston Astros Apology Tour continues and this must-watch show needs either a dramatic re-write, or to be scrapped completely.
What is designed to show dramatic remorse instead reads more like a comedy. Or at least a satire.
Whatever thin chance the Astros and their players had to salvage their reputation they tossed into one of those trash cans they used to beat on to signal what pitch was en route.
The Astros should be known as one of the great teams of the past decade, and a franchise that helped to re-invent the way players are evaluated and scouted. Instead, the Houston Astros of this era will be known solely for cameras, trash cans, buzzers, and cheating.
Choke City is now Cheat City.
On Thursday, the players addressed their own roles in a mess they created for their own careers, for Major League Baseball, and for the Houston Astros organization.
Starting with the owner himself, they fouled one off the face. Most of the sporting public was going to reject any apology, but what owner Jim Crane and the players themselves did on Thursday morning only made matters worse.
Rather than simply own it, and even explain how they skirted the rules via technology and trash cans, the Astros either minimized, ducked, or offered empty rhetoric that even the dumbest sports fan is not going to buy.
Start with this grand slam from Crane, who told the media at the team’s spring training facility in West Palm Beach, “Our opinion is this didn’t impact the game. We had a good team. We won the World Series and we’ll leave it at that.”
You do that. The other 29 teams won’t.
If it didn’t impact the game, why were the Astros doing it? The Astros didn’t have a good team. They had a great team. What they did only made them better, and helped them to win the team’s only World Series.
About 55 seconds after Crane made his first stupid comment, he said, “I didn’t say it didn’t impact the game.”
Can’t knock him too much; this tactic has worked for our President quite well.
Stop any criticism at the Houston Astros’ PR staff for failing to direct, and mold, a better message of contrition. In these type of crisis situations, PR people offer some advice but too often their words are ignored and the millionaires do what they want.
More than the manager and GM who were fired, this is on the players. Even the owner agrees as Crane himself said, “I don’t think I should be held accountable.”
I told the same thing to the cop who pulled me over for driving 80 in a 20. Didn’t take.
The Astros players don’t know it now, but this will follow every member of this organization of this era for forever. Manager A.J. Hinch, GM Juff Luhnow are the two to receive a tangible punishment, but this will shadow Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman and the rest.
When they spoke on Thursday, their words came from the deep end of the kiddie pool.
The only thing that read true were these comments made by shortstop Carlos Correa who said, “We feel really bad for possibly ruining careers and having that advantage by using technology.”
That much I believe. Pro sports are rough, and players understand the arena, but they don’t like the idea of ruining a colleague’s career.
Correa was the best one to talk, and he did the best job of any Astro to just take it rather than to swing at it.
The Houston Astros cheated, were caught, and on Thursday the players themselves who benefited the most from the electronic sign-stealing finally had to talk about it. They didn’t quite own it; what they did was to apologize without quite meaning it.
The Houston Astros Apology Tour will continue, and now we know the rest isn’t worth watching unless we want to laugh.
