Hous­ton As­tros: How they cheated, how COVID-19 helped them, and what 2021 has in store for them

Base­ball fans from all around the world have not for­got­ten about what the Hous­ton As­tros did dur­ing their 2017 cham­pi­onship sea­son and be­yond. 

The rev­e­la­tion that the team used tech­nol­ogy to steal signs from op­pos­ing teams is still fresh in every­one’s mind. 2020 was sure to be a year where op­pos­ing fans all across Ma­jor League Base­ball would boo and heckle the As­tros every­where they went. How­ever, COVID-19 struck, which caused the base­ball sea­son to be short­ened to 60 games and fans not al­lowed in sta­di­ums, mean­ing that the heck­ling and boo­ing had to wait un­til at least 2021. COVID al­lowed Hous­ton some­what of a break-in that they would­n’t have to feel the full weight of their mis­takes. But 2020 is al­most over, and if things are back to nor­mal in 2021, the noise will be deaf­en­ing.

Last No­vem­ber, the bomb­shell of the cen­tury was dropped when for­mer As­tros pitcher Mike Fiers re­vealed that the team had been steal­ing signs us­ing tech­nol­ogy. It should be noted that steal­ing signs is a part of base­ball, but to do so with tech­nol­ogy is il­le­gal. The way they did it was rather in­ter­est­ing, as it was re­vealed that once the signs were re­layed to the team’s dugout, some­body would bang on a trash can to alert the hit­ter that an off-speed pitch was com­ing. The cheat­ing con­tin­ued through the 2017 post­sea­son, mostly while the team was play­ing in Hous­ton. This was made clear by the As­tros records at home and on the road dur­ing that post­sea­son. The As­tros were 8-1 at home that post­sea­son and 3-6 on the road. The most damn­ing ev­i­dence comes from the ALCS against the New York Yan­kees, where the As­tros won games 1, 2, 6, and 7 at home, but lost games 3-5 in New York. It was later re­vealed that there were more at­tempts to cheat in 2018, as dur­ing that post­sea­son, the Cleve­land In­di­ans and Boston Red Sox claimed they no­ticed Hous­ton film­ing their dugouts. There was even spec­u­la­tion that last year in the ALCS, again fac­ing the Yan­kees Jose Al­tuve was wear­ing a buzzer when he sent Hous­ton to the World Se­ries on a walk-off home run off Aroldis Chap­man. This the­ory gained trac­tion when cam­eras showed Al­tuve telling his team­mates not to rip off his jer­sey, as well as run­ning into the tun­nel to change his shirt be­fore do­ing his in­ter­view.

As pre­vi­ously men­tioned, 2020 was go­ing to be full of taunts and back­lash to­wards the As­tros. But the Coro­n­avirus struck dur­ing the win­ter, forc­ing the shut­down of all ma­jor sports. This meant Hous­ton would­n’t have to face some of the back­lashes they were in store for this year. When it was an­nounced that sports would be re­turn­ing with­out fans, this made things even eas­ier for them, as they would­n’t be hear­ing any boos from op­pos­ing fans this year, at least within ball­parks. As COVID con­tin­ued to surge through­out the U.S., sev­eral so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures were put in place. Benches clear­ing in­ci­dents were sub­ject to se­ri­ous pun­ish­ment. As if that was­n’t enough, Com­mis­sioner Rob Man­fred stated that there would also be se­vere pun­ish­ment for throw­ing at hit­ters, which seemed to many like an ob­vi­ous ef­fort to pro­tect the As­tros, though that did­n’t stop Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly from throw­ing be­hind Car­los Cor­rea and Alex Breg­man, de­spite it net­ting him a sus­pen­sion.

Fans will be wait­ing to heckle the As­tros. No mat­ter how long it takes for fans to be al­lowed back into sta­di­ums, no­body will for­get what the As­tros did. Their weak apolo­gies and the lack of pun­ish­ment from Man­fred still do not sit well with fans and play­ers. And it must be grat­i­fy­ing for any­one not as­so­ci­ated with the As­tros that they failed to reach the World Se­ries this year, falling short in a 7 game ALCS against the Tampa Bay Rays. What 2021 has in store for them will all de­pend on where we are with the COVID cri­sis. Should fans be al­lowed into sta­di­ums, you can bet that they’ll re­ceive a bar­rage of taunts and be heck­led mer­ci­lessly. How­ever, if COVID con­tin­ues its ram­page, it’ll be an­other year seem­ingly with­out reper­cus­sions, which will only add to fans’ and play­ers’ anger.

It’ll be years, per­haps even decades, be­fore every­body for­gets about this whole scan­dal. Fans and play­ers alike are an­gry that play­ers and per­son­nel that have been sus­pended have all been sus­pended longer than any As­tros play­ers were for the cheat­ing scan­dal, and this will con­tinue when­ever a non-As­tros player re­ceives a sus­pen­sion. Their ti­tle from 2017 will for­ever be tainted, and play­ers and their teams will re­main hun­grier than ever to de­feat them.