is america’s pastime past its time?
what the astros scandal says about baseball
Baseball has been decreasing in popularity over recent years, with attendance dropping 7.14% since 2015. The Old Ball Game has also steadily decreased relative to Football and Basketball as America’s favorite sport to watch, with 2017 marking Baseball’s lowest point of popularity since 1937.
There will always be true devotees, but the league doesn’t want to maintain a slight decline — it strives to increase its popularity and widen its fan-base. I happen to be a fan of Baseball myself, but I have a colleague I’m trying to convert — let’s call him Mike to protect his identity — who has some reservations.
Almost-fans argue that among the 5 major spectator sports — Football, Basketball, Baseball, Soccer, and Hockey — Baseball is the most desperately boring to watch, in terms of spectacle. The game is slower, more methodical, less violent than its competitors. There’s just less stuff going on.
While home runs are making a return to prominence after a decades-long low in 2014, batting averages are down and strikeouts continue rising year after year. A simple study counted only 18 minutes of action during an average baseball game that’s reached the historically high length of 3 hours and 5 minutes. That’s over 90% of the game when nothing’s happening on the field, just downtime between the action. Take a ‘perfect’ game — one pitcher’s pinnacle of sporting achievement is an almost-fan’s absolute drudgery, as Mike might say.
In the modern competitive environment for viewers attention, how can America’s pastime keep up? I don’t work for Major League Baseball so I won’t bother trying to answer that here like some Monday morning Quarterback. But in a sport where scandals seems par for the course, Baseball wants to avoid taking body shots to its public image. The recent Astros scandal isn’t helping matters.
News broke last week that the Houston Astros cheated during their path to win the 2017 World Series over the LA Dodgers, using technology to assist with sign stealing.
For Mike, sign stealing isn’t referring to the common legal restriction against nabbing public street signs. In Baseball, signs are the codes catchers signal to the pitcher to agree on what pitch is about to be thrown. If somehow the batter knew what pitch was coming, it’d be easier to hit, or to pass on the swing.
Sign stealing has long been a part of Baseball’s history. If a runner on second base is able to decode the signs and relay them to his team, then his ingenuity and skill are rewarded without explicitly breaking the game’s rules. When human capacity limits the observations, sign stealing is simply a standard attempt to gain competitive advantage. But using technology to transcend those human limits turns gaining a competitive advantage into cheating.
The Astros Manager (aka coach), the General Manager (aka President of Baseball Operations) [seriously Baseball, these titles only make it harder for Mike to follow] as well as most of the players have been directly implicated in cheating. The official report on the team revealed “Many of the players who were interviewed admitted that they knew the scheme was wrong because it crossed the line from what the player believed was fair competition and/or violated MLB rules”.
The league suspended both managers, issued a $5 million fine, and took away the Astros 1st and 2nd round draft picks for the next two years. MLB then punted the issue to the Astros, leaving the ball in their court, who fired the managers. So far the players remain undisciplined by the league and the Astros retain their World Series title.
As an organization, the Astros have a well established history of poor decision-making. Take for example replacing their lovable alien mascot Orbit for the far more disturbing, nightmarish Junction Jack. Baseball has quite the assortment of weird mascots, but JJ had neither the goofy charm of the Phillie Phanatic nor the benefit of being on the nose like Billy the Marlin. The Astros did end up reversing their mistake years later by reinstating adorable Orbit — but this 12 year long unforced error should’ve served as an early warning sign that we all wish could’ve been stolen.
Houston’s cheating also calls into question the legitimacy of their own World Series victory in 2017, as well as potentially altering the course of the 2018 Series. More broadly, the scandal raises questions about the role of technology in the ‘Ole Ball Game.
In recent years, technology has been used to decode signs in various ways that have now been explicitly deemed against the rules by MLB. In 2017, the Red Sox(still under investigation) admitted to using Apple watches to help steal signs from the Yankees. However the Astros escalated these tactics by using cameras streaming live to the dugout to decode the signs at their home field in Houston. After seeing the sign, someone in the dugout would bang on a trashcan to indicate to the batter what pitch was coming down the pike before it was thrown.
This system made it easier for Astros hitters to anticipate pitches during their at bats, helping know when to swing — or when not to. This created an uneven playing field slanted in the Astros favor. Houston was nearly always on a power play — as if their opponents had to run up an 8⁰ incline to get to 1st, or if the 3rd base coach was also acting as a defensive tackle.
These tactics degrade the integrity of the game. Fans (and Mike) assume they’re watching top-tier competitors on the biggest stage in the sport, meeting on equal terms to duke it out and see who’s better on the day. Turns out that’s not true.
It’s likely that the Astros weren’t the only ones using technology-assisted sign stealing, they just may have used it the most successfully — apart from getting caught. As Bradford Doolitte, a sports journalist, said: “To think this kind of behavior was limited to one or two teams would be to deny the realities about human behavior in hyper competitive environments with massive economic stakes in play, especially where policy loopholes and gray areas exist, as they did until very recently”.
In this game of inches, there are huge motivations for organizations to make money, get fame, and acquire success. But sports also have other incentives — an undergirding expectation of sportsmanship and fairness rarely demanded in other arenas of life.
Fans see infractions like these with much broader implications on the decency of the game. Joshua Zonni, a young Dodgers supporter said: “As a fan of the MLB and professional sports in general, you expect to see these players and organizations be world-class teams, and to see the need to cheat to get an advantage over the opponent is sad. It shows immorality of the organizations to benefit themselves.” When lifelong enthusiasts committed to the sport are betrayed by blatant cheating across the league, it gives almost-fans an easy reason to turn away.
People have a sense that sports are supposed to provide a level playing field. Even when life isn’t fair, the games we tune into should be. They give two teams an equal shot to step up to the plate and go for a slam dunk.
Sports are at their best when they remind us that some things are more important than winning at all costs. Technological advancement doesn’t require moving the goalposts on ethical, responsible conduct. Time has passed America’s pastime when technology is allowed to run roughshod over the foundations of the game.
Sweeping changes to the game have been suggested to revitalize Baseball and expand to capture the almost-fans. Maybe the pitch clock should be enforced to speed up the games. A mercy rule could be instituted after each odd inning. The pitcher could announce his throws to counter any potential sign stealing the opposing team may have done. The league could take a few notes from Blernsball, like tethering the ball to the pitcher’s mound with an elastic cable to liven things up.
Whatever the solutions, the game needs to start with two teams and a level playing field — that’ll at least help Mike make it to the seventh-inning stretch.
— Forever, a sportsball fan
