Public Enemy No. 1 in Major League Baseball right now is the Houston Astros as they were found guilty of electronic sign-stealing during their 2017 World Series run when they defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games.
While the Astros were punished by MLB in the form of a fine, loss of future draft picks and suspensions for general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch — who were then fired by owner Jim Crane — fans and players around the league did not feel that was enough.
Not only were the Astros allowed to keep their World Series trophy and rings, but none of the players were disciplined. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred explained immunity was granted in exchange for testimony, though the MLB Players Association later disputed that notion.
In an interview with David O’Brien of The Athletic, former Astros designated hitter Evan Gattis owned up to his team’s mistakes and added that he understands why fans feel the way they do:
“I don’t think I can win the hearts over of anyone right now at all, or maybe ever,” said Gattis, 33, who had 96 homers and 293 RBIs in four years with Houston and retired after the 2018 season. “I don’t know how to feel yet. I don’t think anybody — we didn’t look at our moral compass and say, ‘Yeah, this is right.’ It was almost like paranoia warfare or something. But what we did was wrong. Like, don’t get it twisted. It was wrong for the nature of competition, not even just baseball. Yeah, that was wrong. I will say that.”
“We obviously cheated baseball and cheated fans. Fans felt duped. I feel bad for fans.”
“If our punishment is being hated by everybody forever, then (so be it). And I don’t know what should have been done, but something had to be [expletive] done. And I do agree with that, big time. I do think it’s good for baseball if we clean it up. But I really don’t know to this day, and I’ve thought about it a shit ton, know what I mean? And I still don’t know how to feel. I’ll get ripped by somebody — ‘That’s not an apology’ — and if I do apologize, that’s still not going to be good enough. No shit, it’s not going to be good enough. I understand that it’s not [expletive] good enough to say, sorry. I get it.”
Another reason that many people remain angry to this day is Crane and Astros players alike did did not take full responsibility for the scandal and failed to give a sincere apology the first time around.
While players like Gattis coming out and speaking the truth should help mend the Astros’ image around the league, it’s clear that it’s going to be a while before people forgive and forget what took place.
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