'Clean It Up.' It Must Stop ': MLB Is in an Ethical Crisis – Sports Illustrated, Si.com
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Imagine if the Mets and Carlos Beltrán tried to ride out his part in the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.
His tenure as manager of the team would begin with a news conference in which he not only would have to accountfor being a mastermind in the team’s systematic cheating, but also have to answer detailed questions about his misuse of technology, such as why he did not stop when warned, what he did in the 2017 World Series and when his unethical espionage began. (In the first three seasons with replay monitors near the dugout, 2017 – (****************************************************, Beltrán played for the New York Yankees. He was traded to Texas for the final two months of and signed with Houston for 2018).
He also would have to explain why,when the scandal first broke, he lied multiple times to reporters in denying he misused technology to decode signs.
And then he would have to explain why, having cheated the system even after the warning from the commissioner’s office, as a manager he should be one of the key people the office trusts to ensure compliance of those very regulations he flaunted.
That’s how someone who never managed before would begin his first managerial job: as an exposed cheater, liar and untrustworthy steward of the game.
No, it all was to o big, too corrosive and too enduring a burden to just put in a box, close the lid and leave it behind.
But there is something much bigger going on here. It’s bigger than Beltrán and bigger even than the Astros ’scandal. Baseball is smack in the middle of a crisis of ethics. “Finding an edge” has become the mantra of an important data-driven game and world. And as it does, it has spawned one scandal after another in the sport.
Is it too much to ask to find a general manager and manager who actually plays by a fair code of conduct?
If there is anything good to come out of the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal it is that people in baseball are hit with an attack of conscience. The sport needs an awakening. If the jobs of AJ Hinch, Alex Cora, Jeff Luhnow and Beltrán are part of the cost, so be it.
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