Now, Manfred is no prize: but anyone who actually wants to be a toady to bombastic billionaires is more than a bit compromised from the get-go. In this case, however, he is looking for a middle way between creating a backlash against players and indicting an ownership class that is quite probably embracing a variation of the Orange Menace's "lie-cheat-steal-stonewall" worldview. He's treading water even as baseball's reeling Chinese junk skitters across a choppy ocean, headed for what's left of the Great Barrier Reef.
Was there some of that unmentionable quid pro quo in how the penalties were meted out for the Houston squad? Undoubtedly. There had to be actions that caused some perceptible level of pain to the organization, and to some group of individuals who had either been perpetrators or enablers. In the absence of specific evidence about perpetrators, Manfred (a highly-placed hack lawyer) chose to go after the enablers. It's among the more logical things he's done since becoming the milquetoast mannequin version of Bud Selig.
 |
| Rob Manfred & Jim Crane: some kind of backroom deal... |
We think he could have been subtler and more specific in his penalties. We also don't think he's capable of being subtler and more specific, so let us take you beyond what he did--one year suspensions for GM and manager (subsequently fired), draft choices ripped away for several years, and the players forced to wear the same jockstraps for all 162 games (just trying to make sure you're paying attention...).
Let's have more fun: take away their 26th man for five years. Tie both hands behind their backs: take away their post-July 31 trade and waiver privileges. We like another constraint widely suggested: set a lower luxury tax threshold for five years.
Let's go further:
--Take away their instant replay rights for three years.
--Ban them from using defensive shifts for the same length of time.
--Create a system of chance outcomes where one game in every intraleague series of the season utilizes a coin-flip to determine in which game in the series they will play without the DH.
Perhaps you can see where this is going. What people may be responding to underneath the "blood in the water" remarks is the fact that the real cheaters--the players--got off scot-free. The penalties are too diffuse to affect them. This ties in with the underlying mood of the country, that is twisted up over the nature of entitlement and how it has distorted so much in America as it has settled over our discourse like a strangling fog ever since the advent of Ronald Reagan. "Entitled" people have become the enemy. In baseball as in politics, much of this has been turned on its head by the cunning "poisoners of the lower orders," where the truly entitled are victimizing us all.
The players who participated could be forcibly traded away, but that's too simple-minded. And that still doesn't punish them. No, they need to stay on a team where the rules are stacked against them--at least for awhile. What it will tell them--and any other players tempted to cheat--that if they get caught doing so, they will have to endure a series of psychologically parlous conditions that will eat away at their morale. If they want to mess with competitive balance by cheating, then that competitive balance will mess right back at them.
That is what's missing from Manfred's punishments, and that is the visceral dissatisfaction that many are feeling in the aftermath of his announcement. It's probably too late to impose these sneakier, more deviously effective psychological penalties on the Trashtros, but...if we can only get the right guy in the Commissioner's office, it can be done next time.
And there will always be a next time.
[ADDENDUM: In the past 36 hours, new rumors and unfounded accusations have spiked regarding the Astros' possible cheating via electronic devices; this has amped up a rabid subgroup of fans (all of whom, in this oversaturated media age, are would-be pundits...) calling for the ultimate punishment--a life ban for Astros players.
Given the volume of mouth-foam being expended by these folk, it's vitally important to add a nuance here that they are discarding in their zeal for retribution: we only ban permanently those who may have cheated to lose. Those folk are beyond the pale--all others, who operate in the real world of human nature/human frailty, are given some less drastic form of punishment.
Those prone to jumping on the bandwagon of unprovable conspiracy theories need to keep this in mind, if in fact they can get anything into their minds given how obsessed with vengeance they've become (certainly another dispiriting sign of the times).
Let's point out again that the absence of a direct punishment for the players involved is what's driving all this vitriol. The subtle (wonky) suggestions in this essay are--despite their wonkiness--an absolutely effective remedy for this, and would go all of the rest of the way needed to create a level of deterrence that teams and players would desperately want to avoid. Strategic disadvantages in most of the games played over a number of years would be a daily reminder of their transgressions, and would demonstrate to other teams just how much suffering would be in store for anyone else who strayed from the straight-and-narrow.]
