Today, Explained - Houston, we have a problem

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Baseball’s back, but fans won’t get the chance to boo the cheating Astros. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The reigning World Series champions, the Washington Nationals. I don't know, why do they call it the World Series anyway? It's just like a bunch of American teams and one Canadian team? Doesn't really seem fair. Anyway, the World Series champion Washington Nationals had their season opener last night. None other than Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the ceremonial first pitch. It was a pitch to remember. And a bunch of other teams have their season openers today. Noam Hassenfeld, you reported an episode for

Today Explained a couple weeks ago on all the sports coming back in bubbles. Is baseball doing the same thing? Is there a baseball bubble, a base bubble? No, actually, baseball's kind of on its own here. Men's and women's soccer have come back inside bubbles. Men's and women's basketball are coming back inside bubbles. But MLB is planning to play the whole season with every team in its home stadium. Hmm. And is that going to be safe for Major League Baseball? Well, they're testing.

They're doing temperature checks. They've got a lot of new rules. No spitting, no sunflower seeds. No seeds! No seeds. No arguing, social distancing in the dugout, masks in the clubhouse. And the public health expert I spoke to said this really could work if they follow the rules. They have a lot of distance between players and they are outdoors.

So if they're controlling what's happening in the clubhouse, especially with the testing they're doing, I think it is okay. This is Dr. Tara Kirksell. She's a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. You know, if there was a sport that you could avoid doing a bubble in, I think baseball is probably one of those. There's definitely a risk here, just like there is with any other type of reopening. But honestly, her biggest concern isn't about the players. It's that fans might have watch parties at home or that it might just give us this sense of normalcy

that we don't really deserve. I mean, that seems totally fair. What are the fans going to do here? No fans. No fans. No fans. They are going to pump artificial fan noise into stadiums, but the fans themselves are not going to be back.

And it's really a huge disappointment because fans across the country were looking forward to booing the hell out of the Houston Astros. Oh, that's right. The Astros. The Astros. It feels like ages ago, but before the pandemic hit, there was a baseball scandal that threatened to tear the entire sport apart.

Is it story time? It all started last fall. On November 12th, I had three Verizon employees installing cable and internet, and I was hiding in my empty office just scrolling Twitter when I scroll across the Athletic article, Astros cheated in 2017, banging scheme. And from there, my eyes kind of wide into my jaw drops. I said, oh, okay. Jimmy O'Brien runs a YouTube channel called Jamboy Media.

In that article he saw, a former Astros pitcher went on the record about one of the most absurd scams in baseball history. The Astros had a computer monitor right beyond their dugout, and they would watch the signs given from the catcher. A catcher uses hand signals to tell the pitcher which pitch to throw. Signs like one finger for fastball, two for curveball, three for changeup. So if the catcher puts down two fingers or three fingers,

they would have another player or personnel bang a trash can to send the signal to the batter. If there's not a bang, that means it's a fastball. If the hitters did hear a bang, they'd know to expect a curveball or a changeup. Rumors had been out there forever, and now my jaws kind of drop like, oh my god, this is it. As I'm reading the article, it details that Danny Farquhar, the relief pitcher for the White Sox, says that he stepped off the mound in the middle of an at-bat because he heard the banging. So Jimmy thought, that has to be on camera somewhere.

So you can easily go to his game logs and see the two times he pitched in Houston and find it. Jimmy wanted to see if the banging was loud enough to hear on regular TV broadcasts. It was, so he put together a video. I found the footage, let's watch it. Fastball, no bang at all. Next pitch, there's the changeup. Bang, bang, and Farquhar steps off and says,

hey, they got the fucking signs. We got to change this. This is super upsetting. He uploaded the video to YouTube, muted his phone. So I didn't get back home till later at night, and then I looked at my phone, and it was insane. Texts, emails, calls from friends, fans, media, and Jimmy kept finding more footage

with the banging in the background. More evidence that the Astros were cheating. Here's another one. Here's another one. And then, you know, everyone started finding them, and I would add them to the thread. And the Astros didn't just cheat. They won the World Series while cheating. They got to visit the White House, they got enormous diamond rings, and they each got almost a half million dollars in bonuses.

If this was a team that did this and didn't win, they might get laughed at and like, huh, that didn't work at all. What were you doing? But the fact that it worked makes it worse. The sports world pretty much exploded. These videos made the cheating so clear. And you didn't have to be a hardcore fan to get it.

Even they, maybe they've never watched baseball ever, can understand, oh, I get it. That is bad. Before we go any further, let's clear something up. Stealing signs? Not against the rules. Stealing signs is part of the game. This is former pro ballplayer Daryl Hamilton.

I mean, you know, if you're not trying to figure out what the other team is doing, then obviously you're not trying to win a game. But not all sign stealing is the same. Sign stealing is illegal if you use cameras, electronics, or any technological device to aid you in stealing the signs. The Astros' trash can method was low-tech, but the camera and computer monitor live-streaming the catcher's signs were not. By the end of 2017, they had complaints. Players have said, we sent it up the ladder internally and complained and nothing happened. MLB didn't take any action to stop the Astros, so rival teams changed tactics.

They started using sequences instead of just single numbers. The catcher puts down, you know, 1-3-3-1, and then the pitcher knows it's the third signal or it's the second signal. They have their own sequence. And they started using that in 2018 because people knew what was happening in 2017. But that didn't really help against the Astros. The Astros had this thing called Code Breaker. It's a computer learning algorithm.

So say the catcher puts down 2-1-2-3 and then the pitcher throws a fastball. Other Astros would then enter that into Codebreaker. 2-1-2-3, fastball. The next pitch is 2-3-1-2 and that's a curveball. Another pitch, type it in. And by five or six, these computer algorithms can decode what it is. And then you can enter the signs and it will spit out what pitch is going to come. The cheating went on for years. Then right after the 2019 World Series, the athletic article drops, Jimmy uploads his video and Major League Baseball to panic. MLB did a thorough investigation.

They suspended the manager and general manager for the Astros for one year without pay. They fined the team $5 million, which is the max amount. And then they also took away some future draft picks. And the big takeaway from that investigation? They confirmed, yes, the Astros cheated, and they cheated in the postseason as well. But MLB let the players off the hook.

They were given full immunity if they spoke and came clean about what happened. That same day that MLB publishes the investigation, the Astros respond. Today is a very difficult day for the Houston Astros. The Astros owner, Jim Crane, has a press conference announcing that he has fired the manager of the Astros and the general manager of the Astros. You can be confident that we will always do the right thing and will not have this happen again on my watch. But that didn't exactly end things. I think Major League Baseball should fly into Houston, go to the Astros facilities, and confiscate that World Series trophy immediately.

And the Astros haven't been too apologetic. We as a team are totally focused on moving forward to the 2020 season. They will not admit that they cheated. They say they broke some rules. May I ask, is it cheating? Excuse me? Do you use the word cheating? Was this cheating?

We broke the rules. And you can phrase that any way you want. Their tone, especially the owner, it just rings false. You know, our opinion is that this didn't impact the game. We had a good team.

We won the World Series, and we'll leave it at that. Players who didn't play for the Astros weren't buying the apology or the punishment. The guy said it wasn't impacting the game. Are you kidding me? You know, he banged on trash cans, no one pitch was coming. Definitely does. I think the league thought a lot of teams maybe do stuff like this

and they would keep their mouths shut because they don't want to get caught as well, but that was not the case. I know personally I lost respect for those guys. I mean, these guys were cheating for three years. They cheated the game. They've cheated us as players. They can't take responsibility for their actions and it doesn't sit right.

What should have happened was the commissioner vacated their championship and then we moved forward. You're playing in the Olympics and you win a gold medal and you find out you cheated. You don't get to keep that medal. Some players are going even further. The Astros are being sued by a former pitcher named Mike Bolsinger. Who probably still has nightmares of banging trash cans. He accuses the Strohs, listen to this, of unfair business practices, negligence, and intentional interference with contractual economic relations. On August 4th, 2017, Bolsinger came into a game against the Astros.

And the first batter walked. The next batter hit a home run. There's another one deep to it. And a double. and a walk, and a single, and a single, and then a walk, and then he finally got a fly ball, which was a deep fly ball. So he faced one, two, three, four, five, six, eight batters. He got one batter out. This ball is popped to end the inning. And that was it for Bolsinger.

After that game, he never pitched again in the majors. In fact, he wasn't even offered another contract. Bolsinger isn't the only one filing a lawsuit here. Season ticket holders have filed their own lawsuit, and a group of fantasy baseball players even tried to pull together a class action. And MLB's response? They essentially said that cheating is a part of the game. And they're not wrong.

Noam's got that after a break. All right. Alright. Bam. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com. Ramp.com.

Cards issued by Sutton Bank. Member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. The Astro sign-stealing scheme was big news, but to baseball fans, it wasn't really out of the ordinary. According to sports writer Joe Piznanski, sign-stealing isn't just tolerated. It's a core part of baseball. It is just embedded in the game that if you can find a way to get a little of advantage, you should do it. And we're not just talking about peeking at the catcher here. We're talking elaborate, high-tech, heist-level sign stealing.

It goes back to the very beginning. So in 1899, there was a team called the Philadelphia Athletics. Here we go now, A's. That team was the best hitting team in the National League. Yes, sir. They developed a reputation as a team that you could not throw a high fastball to. Can't get them with the high heat. And it turned out it's because they had a guy.

That's me. Who would sit in the center field, usually in the manager's suite. Down in front. And he had binoculars or a telescope of some kind. Either one works. And he would steal the signs from the catcher he would stare in and know what pitch was coming but the second part of that is you have to get word to the hitter of what that pitch is and what they had was a buzzer system believe it or not in 1899 now how does this thing work the third base coach was wearing a buzzer. Yeah this thing is itchy. And the sign stealer would press a button in such a way

to let the third base coach know exactly what pitch was coming and where it was coming. So if it was going to be a high fastball versus a low fastball he would basically yell out a code word and Flamingo! And that's how they would steal signs. This wasn't just limited to the turn of the 20th century, though. Some of baseball's most iconic moments might never have happened without high-tech sign stealing. The 1951 Giants were trailing the Dodgers by a number of games going into the final few weeks of the season. Dodger manager Chuck Dressen declares the Giants is dead.

The season seemed over, and then the Giants went on this extraordinary run, caught the Dodgers at the end of the year. Led by rookie Willie Mays, the Giants charged back to force a three-game playoff for the pennant. And then they ended up playing a very famous playoff, which ended with Bobby Thompson hitting a home run that to this day is still called the shot heard around the world. Back to throw. There's a long shot. I tell you, I believe. The Giants win the college.

The Giants win the college. And they're going crazy. They're going crazy. I remember a few years ago I did a list of the 32 most famous home runs, and it was number one. And it turns out they were using a system, a buzzer system, just the same. Basically, it was the same scheme, looking through a telescope and then buzzing different people to flash the signs to the hitter. So that one hurts more than the 1899 athletics

because it tramples upon one of the most storied seasons in baseball history. As technology got more advanced, sign stealing did too. Now there are many different ways to get word to the hitter. I mean, a couple of years ago, there was, you know, a small range scandal about the Yankees and the Red Sox using their Apple Watches to steal signs, which actually is a very smart way to do it if you're going to do it. That's probably way better than a buzzer system. This century plus of high-tech sign stealing, it was frowned upon, but it wasn't technically

against any official rules. MLB did send out a few sort of warnings over the last few decades, but high-tech sign stealing didn't make it into the official rulebook until 2019, over a year after the Astros were banging on trash cans. It's almost like baseball wanted this stuff to keep happening. Cheating is such an integral part of baseball. We're talking cheating that goes way beyond sign stealing. You know, one of the most famous players, managers, is a guy named John McGraw, who essentially built his entire baseball philosophy around the idea that if you're not cheating, you're not trying.

John Joseph McGraw, a truculent, swaggering, fiery egotist who was pure genius. He was famous for all sorts of different cheating. He used to grab a runner's belt when he was trying to tag up from third base to prevent him from scoring. He used to have the groundskeeper not water the dirt in front of home plate so that the hitters could chop the ball into the dirt, have it bounce up really high in the air, and that way they could get singles. And he did this in Baltimore, and to this day, it's still called the Baltimore Chop.

McGraw was the most hated, beloved, envied, admired, feared, and respected man in the game. There is very much a sense within the game that cheating itself is part of the drama. It's part of the fabric of baseball. So there's always been a reluctance to, you know, make the rules too black and white, I guess you would have to say. Okay. But like, what does it mean to say cheating is part of the fabric of baseball? I mean, if cheating is part of the game, then isn't it not cheating? Yeah. You have nailed one of the great sort of riddles of baseball because, yes, baseball is wanted to say that cheating is cheating. You shouldn't do it. But then the other

hand, cheaters are celebrated in so many ways. I mean, there's one of the most famous players of baseball history is Gaylord Perry wrote a whole book about how he used the spitball and how he fooled people with it. Yeah. He's like an admitted obvious cheater and he's in the hall of fame. And yet on the other hand, you look back, the greatest scandal in baseball history, other than what should have been the greatest scandal, which was segregation, but the greatest actual scandal in baseball history was the 1919 Chicago

White Sox throwing the World Series, the Black Sox. Well, there are numerous teams in the 1910s through World Series or through games. Gambling was a huge part of the game and baseball kept looking the other way because it was in baseball's best interest to look the other way. Well, suddenly after 1919, suddenly people were like, oh, baseball's not, it's not authentic. It's not real. And baseball had to come in and do something. And of course, that was the case where they drew the most famous line in baseball, which is you can't gamble on the game.

A line that is so strict that Pete Rose, many, many, many years later, gambled on baseball and is still banned for eternity from the game. So that's when baseball acts, when it's too late, when all the cheating has become so bad. But once you start getting to the point where people start questioning what they're seeing, which is I think what happened with the 2017 Astros,

that's when baseball has to act and that's when baseball does act. You know, I was speaking with somebody in the baseball office just after this Astros scandal, and we were talking about this larger picture of baseball wanting to change, needing to change, and yet not really wanting to change at all. And he said something really interesting. He said, we're fighting is people's unwillingness to grow old. People don't want to believe that time has gone on. They want everything to stay the way it was. And it's a losing battle. For all of baseball's long history, skirting the rules has been at the heart of the game.

And MLB has been reluctant to change that. But this year, the pandemic has brought about arguably the biggest changes the game has ever seen. Both leagues will have a designated hitter, extra innings will start with a runner on second, and no one will be allowed to even spit. On top of that, no more fans, social distancing, temperature checks, testing.

Baseball has shown it can change dramatically in just a few months. On top of that, no more fans, social distancing, temperature checks, testing. Baseball has shown it can change dramatically in just a few months. But if it wants to survive, the league that's always tried to get around rules is finally going to have to follow them. Noam Hassenfeld, he's the sports correspondent over there at Today Explained. Jillian Weinberger edited the episode, and Sean Ramos-Furham is the host. The rest of the team is Afim Shapiro, Halima Shah, Bridget McCarthy, Muj Zaydi, and Amina Alsadi. Cecilia Lay checks the facts, and Breakmaster Cylinder writes the jingles.

Liz Kelly Nelson is Vox's editorial director of podcasts, and Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.