Criminals Then, Now, Forever

Today’s Germany is peaceful. They have a relatively modest military budget, do not concern themselves with foreign military adventures. They are actually pacifist if you were to characterize their foreign policy.

They obviously weren’t always this way. The brokered peace after WWI didn’t last, and really only added fuel to sense of grievance, sentiments of national and racial chauvinism and let to an even more destructive war just a few years later.

The difference was that there was no compromise peace after WWII. The policy for both Axis powers was complete and unconditional surrender. and to get to that point, Germany, and Japan, were bombed to oblivion and their economies, infrastructure and political apparatuses were razed to the nubs. In doing so, the previous militarism and aggression and the culture surrounding it were totally and completely annihilated and a new more peaceful government, and subsequently culture, were imposed on them (the current Japanese constitution was literally written by Americans under the direction of McArthur).

Both Germany and Japan started over, and we will never have to worry about them becoming military aggressors ever again.

After the Blacksox Scandal, Kennisaw Mountain Landis permanently banned the players involved, including one of the best players in the game. It was extremely harsh, even draconian, and the story of Shoeless Joe is almost considered a tragedy.

But it worked. Gambling ceased to be an issue that would undermine the integrity of the game. Only until Bart Giamatti did the same thing to Pete Rose would gambling ever become an issue that needed to be addressed.

The point of both of these analogies is that, if you truly want an issue to go away, it needs to be completely rooted out and defeated – through unconditional surrender. There needs to be a definitive statement, a draconian measure to leave no wiggle room for the issue to resurrect itself.

Technology continues to advance. There will be more and more opportunities for teams to try to gain an unfair advantage. (In a larger sense and on a somewhat separate issue, technology hardware and the data analysis will more and more take the human element out of the game. )

This issue needs to be addressed definitively and forcefully. The equivocating we are seeing now by the Astros – being sorry but not sorry, offering a semi mea culpa but not really – is not unlike post WWI Germany claiming they didn’t really lose and were betrayed. It leaves open the opportunity for this to rear its head again.

When people don’t trust the integrity of the game completely, it will kill the game.

This is why Commissioner Landis did what he did. He understood this. Manfred is weak, but we also live in a society where leaders can’t take definitive action, where equivocation is the rule of the day, where the message is lost in weasel speak. (the same thing happened in the NFL with the Kaepernick fiasco).

Hinch supposedly busted up the monitors in the dugout. They had their cheating monitors right there in the dugout?! I’m sure his tirade must have been caught on camera since there are cameras everywhere. Has anybody seen a picture of him doing that?

Take the Astros’ 2017 WS title away. Too bad we’ll never known what would have been without the cheating.