Dylan Hernandez, LA Times sports columnist, wrote something this morning rare in any corporate media journalism when he said Astros' owner Jim Crane is "an out-of-touch plutocrat used to people telling him they agree with whatever nonsense comes out of his mouth." Hernandez then calls the commissioner's report a whitewash and says it was designed to make the manager and GM fall guys, while the dumb, overrated billionaire owner, and the actual players who were cheating, off the hook. Over the decades of reading newspapers, I have long noted how sports writers have been allowed far more leeway to rip rich owners for being overrated jerks in a way political reporters never are. We know why, and you do, too. Sports don't count in terms of changing control of a society from the owners to the workers. Instead, while modern sports is big business, it remains the circus part of bread and circuses, designed to keep the masses busy while the top 0.1% control our lives akin to feudal days. Chomsky is quite insightful and amusing about this.
However, on the topic of the cheating scandal, I have said Major League Baseball (MLB) should have stripped the 2017 World Series win from the Astros, and that the Astros go down in history as the new BlackSox (If you haven't seen the film, Eight Men Out watch it). I have said the same punishment should be meted out against the Boston RedSox if, after the investigation is complete, it turns out Alex Cora, the third base coach for the Astros in 2017, took his cheating ways to Bean Town in 2018. I really do not understand how the Dodgers traded for Mookie Betts from Boston. Are we really sure he will be as good a hitter when he doesn't know what pitch is coming?
We know the Dodgers largely lost in 2017 and 2018 because its pitchers were roughed up in both World Series. But now, we have learned how, too often, during that 2017 series, and probably the 2018 series, the Astros and BoSox hitters knew what pitch was coming. I don't know why the players are turned into children, having no agency. Well, actually I do. Major league sports represent some of the biggest money ventures now, and the players at least are highly paid, too, unlike the BlackSox 1919 players, which was why the players were paid by bookies to throw the 1919 World Series. I have much more sympathy for those players, and of course the legendary Shoeless Joe, who either took no money and played great, or took the money, and still played great. These modern cheaters wanted to win so badly they decided to cheat. You know. Like their bosses did to make the billions they made. I think that is even worse than any of the eight players banned for life from baseball ever did. The Astros players, all of them who ever got up to hit in that series, should all be suspended for at least two years, if not completely banned from baseball. And yet, the Dodgers just traded for one of the likely BoSox cheaters. Betts. Oh well. It is at least cynically amusing to see the corruption of modern American politics reflected in America's past time. I wonder what Ray Kinsella's father thinks of all this? :(
