Houston, we have another problem

By BRUCE LOWITT

The Houston Astros cheated their way to winning the 2022 World Series just as they did it in 2017, but with more technology, according to a Major League Baseball internal inquiry.

This time, though, it’s going to cost them a lot more.

“That banging-on-a-garbage-pail to steal signs, that was ancient compared with how they screwed the Mariners, Yankees and Phillies,” according to Nelson Tejada, manager of MLB’s Department of Investigations.

Tejada said Houston Manager Dusty Baker was unaware of the electronic cheating and won’t be disciplined., “but if the Astros offer him a new contract, I’d tell him to tell them to f*** off. He’s too good to work for these crooks and you know there’ll be plenty of clubs knocking on his door.”

The Astros were virtually unscathed by the 2017 scandal when Commissioner Rob Manfred levied just a $5-million fine and took away a few draft picks.

Now, though, he’s bringing down the hammer.

“I’m permanently voiding this year’s championship – it will be blank, as it was in 1994 – and voiding the Astros’ American League charter for the 2023 season,” Manfred said.

“The team will remain in Minute Maid Park but will be reassigned to the independent Pecos League, whose Alpine (Texas) Cowboys will replace them in the American League West next year. I hear Kokernot Field is a beautiful place to play baseball,” Manfred added.

Five years ago the Astros used a center-field camera to steal the opposing catchers’ signs and a team member watching the video near the Houston dugout would bang on a trash can to let the batter know what pitch was coming.

This year, baseball adopted PitchCom. A catcher pressed buttons on his wrist, sending a signal for a specific pitch and location, like fastball, high and inside, to a speaker in the pitcher’s cap. It usually worked.

“But have you ever seen some clown with a Fitbit trying to make a phone call or figure out if they’re having a heart attack?” Tejada said. “Catchers wound up calling for a pickoff with no one on base, ordering a pizza delivery and trying to win Powerball. I think Kyle Higashioka once tried to signal (Yankees Manager Aaron) Boone that he had to, um, pee.”

PitchCom supposedly ended teams’ stealing signs – but baseball didn’t count on Sam Visser, the Astros’ Manager of Baseball Technology and, not coincidentally, a former intern in MLB’s Department of Investigations.

He called Niki Werkheiser, NASA’s Director of Technology Maturation and a rabid Astros fan, at the Space Center in Houston. “I came up with the technology to intercept and relay the opposing catcher-to-pitcher transmissions into the Houston batting helmets,” she said, “although it took a while to eliminate Amazon’s deliveries to the batter’s box.”

And Visser added, “It also took a few of the players a while to get used to hearing a voice in their helmet. I remember (Alex) Bregman yelling ‘Shut up!’ to no one in particular in his first at-bat against the Mariners. But if you watch the replay of the eighth inning closely you’ll see him say ‘Got it’ just before he homered.”