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By Cameron Moore (7th)

Hello, everyone, it is November, the best month of the year! (in my totally biased opinion.) It’s time for, you guessed it, Question of the Month! And this is a very special edition for me; I posted my first ever SCOOP article a year ago (November 2023), and, you guessed it, it was NOT about Christmas Day. It was about how the Phillies stink.

Let me ask you something (and no, this isn’t the main question). Why are trash cans here?

Now, obviously, here on CMS Sportscast, I don’t talk about your local trash service. I talk about sports. But what do trash cans have to do with sports, you might ask? Enter: the 2017 Houston Astros baseball team. 

What is so significant about this team, did they cheat, and if they did, how did they cheat?

But, before I break down trash cans, let me inform you about a wonderful history of baseball cheating.

There has always been cheating in baseball. The first major incident came with the 1919 Chicago White Sox (nicknamed the “Black Sox” because of their cheating allegations), when multiple players were banned from baseball for life for throwing the World Series. Legendary Cincinnati Red Pete Rose was banned for life in 1989 for gambling and is not in the Hall of Fame, despite being the game’s all-time hits leader. Rest in peace, Pete Rose.

But, baseball cheating isn’t about gambling and throwing games anymore. That’s stupid. It just gives you more money. But the 2017 Astros wanted performance.

There has also been cheating in the game to improve performance. The most infamous stretch of this was during the late 90s and early 2000s, in a time now known as the Steroid Era, when MLB legends such as Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds, among others, were reportedly taking PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs).

But I’m not here for gambling or PEDs. I’m here to tell you one of the most controversial cheating methods, which teams have been doing for decades: sign stealing. There have been multiple scandals, but the Astros has been the biggest one of all time.

However, it’s legal? Technically? It is. If a runner is standing on second, or someone has a view of a catcher’s signs from the dugout or 1st/3rd base coach’s box, they can see the signs and relay them to the hitter. This is completely legal.


The only thing that is illegal about sign stealing is if you use technology, such as cameras or binoculars, to figure out the pitch. This is what the Houston Astros did. According to a New York Times article on the scandal, present-day Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who was a Astros bench coach in 2017, originally used a replay room that would communicate the signs to the dugout. Cora would eventually arrange a TV to be put right outside the dugout. The TV was connected to a center field camera that pointed directly to the catcher, and his signs. Astros players would then bang on a trash can to tell the hitter if an off-speed pitch (such as a curveball or slider) was coming. This was very clearly audible on broadcasts, letting fans hear the Astros’ cheating on full display. But, how do we know that these trash can bangs actually correspond to sign stealing?

Well, I’m not the first person to talk about this topic. There are hundreds of YouTube evaluations about the Astros’ sign stealing scandal. ALL of the trash can bangs occur almost immediately after the catcher puts down the signs, on off-speed pitches only. Not to mention, we have official MLB investigations on the 2017 Astros, as well as players such as 2017 Astros pitcher Mike Fiers, who went to the Oakland Athletics in 2018, and told Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of the Athletic important details about the Astros sign-stealing scandal. They would write a blockbuster article about the topic in late 2019.

The Athletic article states that, “Early in the 2017 season, at least two uniformed Astros got together to start the process. One was a hitter who was struggling at the plate and had benefited from sign stealing with a previous team, according to club sources; another was a coach who wanted to help.” My brain immediately jumped to the coach being Alex Cora, and while that does make sense, we don’t know for sure.

Another big piece of the article was former White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar, who pitched at Minute Maid Park in September of 2017. He remembered hearing bangs from the Astros’ dugout on every single changeup signal. He stepped off the mound after hearing the third bang, he changed his signs, and the banging stopped. This was pure evidence that the Astros were up to no good in 2017. Even though the Boston Red Sox and eventually the Yankees were accused of stealing signs around that same time, the Astros’ scandal got the most attention. I’m not blaming that on the media, but whatever.

The sport actually has a long history of sign stealing, all the way back to the 1800s. It’s just become a bigger thing since the technology has improved.

However, Houston was not punished as badly as they could’ve been. From what I’ve found, the only Astros that received long-term suspensions were former manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, who both got a one-year ban from MLB. Alex Cora was briefly fired as Red Sox manager before being resigned shortly after. Mets manager and 2017 Astro outfielder Carlos Beltran resigned before even managing a game in the Mets’ 2020 season. League commissioner Rob Manfred has been criticized by some for not giving any player punishments, as well as not vacating the Astros’ first World Series title, from that 2017 season. He said at a press conference in 2020 that he became less and less willing to rid of the 17’ Commissioner’s Trophy, and for good reason. The Astros built a dynasty after this, winning the AL pennant in 2019 and 2021, as well as winning the World Series in not only that controversial 2017 season, but also (as all of us Phillies fans know) winning in 2022 as well. In fact, 2024 was the first year since 2017 that they didn’t make the ALCS. A strip of the 2017 title would basically create a big domino effect that Manfred clearly doesn’t want to deal with.

There were also lots of disgusted players. Yankees star outfielder and the likely 2024 AL MVP, Aaron Judge, said his MVP was robbed by Astros 2B Jose Altuve in 2017. Cubs outfielder Cody Bellinger, who played with the Dodgers that lost to Houston in the 2017 World Series, supported Judge’s claims while adding, “Everyone knows they stole the ring from us.”

So, that has pretty much answered the first three questions (again, not counting the trash can one) at the beginning of the article. But, there is a fun, secret, fourth question. Did they cheat in another way.

I bring this up because it is two years later, the 2019 ALCS. Astros 2B Jose Altuve is up to bat against flame-throwing Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman, when he hits a Chapman slider for a home run to advance to their second World Series in three years. While rounding third base, Altuve insists that his teammates do not tear off his jersey, which has caused many to speculate that he was wearing an electronic buzzer that Houston was rumored to have used in 2019. That is a whole different story. The ironic part about that, however? The Astros went 0-4 at home and 3-0 on the road in their World Series loss that year. It is not confirmed if they used buzzers (they likely didn’t), but I just wanted to throw that out there.

The Houston Astros, after winning their controversial 2017 World Series in game 7. (The NYT) 

So, that wraps up this rather long edition of Question of the Month. I have really run out of things to say at the end of these articles, but I will say something. Never steal signs with electronics. Just, don’t. It’s a bad omen of things to come. 

Sources:

New York Times Article

Athletic Article

Other Random News:

MLB: World Series and full MLB season recap coming soon on CMS Sportscast!

NBA: The start of a season…

NHL: The start of a season…also.

WNBA: The New York Liberty have defeated the Minnesota Lynx for their first WNBA title. The Liberty won 67-62 in a dramatic overtime winner-take-all game 5.

More MLB: Legendary Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela has passed at the age of 63.

Soccer: Manchester United fire manager Erik Ten Hag. 

More soccer: Manchester City midfielder Rodri won the Ballon D’or, an award given to the top soccer player in the world.