Houston Astros: Caught Stealing | Uncovering the Scheme | 5
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From wondering I Linda gram, and this is american scandal.

There's a ground ball right side could do IT, they used to ask, grows our world champions for the first time in franchise history.

That's the sound .

of the houston astros winning games seven against the dodgers to become world champions in two thousand seventeen as the players and owner jim crane reveled in the Victory, one announcer said, this well run organization gets to celebrate here at dodger stadium.

But beyond the campaign and commissioner's trophy and dark clouds world all around, baseball insiders began to talk, alleging the ao had invented a system of sign stealing that involved using video technology and banging on trash cans. At least one fan noticed a distinct pattern to the thumping, and questions and rumors began to swirl. When inside sources tipped off reporter evan relic, he knew that might be a huge story, and IT was jelic, and fellow reporter can rosen told, broke the astros sign stealing scandal for the athletic.

And evan joins me today. He is a senior rider for the athletic covering baseball and the author of the book winning fixes everything, how baseballs brightest st. Minds created sports biggest mess. Our conversation .

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And relic, thanks for speaking with me today on american scandal.

Hello, thanks for me.

So as someone who's covered the asters for the huge technical ical for a fair amount of time, i'd love to know what your thoughts were when they began to rise as a team and then win the world series in two thousand seventeen.

Now they're undertaking this really ambitious losing project. They attacked for a number of years to try to acquire top rof pics and thereby rebuild. And so when they finally did get good, IT was not surprising.

That was the plan all along that they would suffer through these years of bad baseball and that they would accumulate in stockpile these top players, and eventually they would get good. And Frankly, went. The current administration took over.

They already had some good players in the organization. They had George spring, they had hosie tuv y, they had dAlice o so they weren't starting from nothing. But the idea is that they would take a long rebuild to get to a point of contention.

And how is IT to go through these painful years?

Astros had never want a world series. IT was a fan base in a franchise that was starved and ready for something different. And you had this gregarious and charming executive in gf luna come in, and you ve had an owner and jim craye, who had not been A A majority owner before. And so they represented something shiny and new and informative for an organization that through every other attempt and every other method that they had employed, had never really got anywhere. The fan base was basically ready for anything, even as painful as IT was.

So to the point of our series signs dealing now, IT and other shanika have been around in the game as long as the game has existed. But what did major league baseball allow in terms of stealing signs in two thousand and seventeen? What was considered acceptable and what was forbidden?

What's always been allowed as if you are a runner on base, if you are a runner on second base, you can use your eyes to star in and see if you can pick up what the catchers throwing down. If you can detect that, okay, one means fast ball, which is traditionally what one has meant. One, catch your flashes, the number one between his legs.

So fare game. What was violative at the time in a road sense that warrant as many specific real desert should have been? But what was IT was using electronics.

You were not allowed to use electronics to aid in science stealing the cardinal sign of the astra scheme using off the field electronics. IT is not the fact that they stole signs at all. IT is the method and how they did IT, which totally eliminated the field of play.

But in two thousand and seventeen, this using electronics, was perhaps a gray area.

By the letter of the law, IT should not have been in great area. By the way, IT had been legislated and handled. IT had kind of become something of a grey area. Majority baseball in twenty fourteen introduced expanded instant replay. Baseball is trying to catch up with the nf, fl, in and other sports where fans at home could easily see, well, this call was wrong.

Why can't we reverse IT? And so in twenty four teen, majorly baseball gives every single team a replay video room and I, to have a staffer in this room where the manager, the dugout, can call and say, hate this play, right? Should be chAllenged, should be chAllenges, call.

And so the staff is using video. And players using this video on some teams, a couple of contending teams starts to realize, well, we can use this video to our advantage in a different way. And so there is a sanctions use of video from which this clearly illegal behavior arises.

You were not supposed, by using the repayment to be able to, in real time, steal the other team signs. But the great value of majority baseball in this endeavor is that they didn't realize what would happen if you gave these hyper competitive players in these teams access to something like video. They always want in edge, and they found one.

So in two thousand and eleven, this is the year that the astro hired x machinery consultation jeff luna as their general matter. The same year that money ball came out as a film based on the book by Lewis. There was change in the water in majority baseball. How did luna change the culture at the astros though? And how did you think and adapter die eos feature into the rebuilding of the team?

Before money ball, baseball teams were basically trophy Prices for very wealthy men. They were not run with the same ruthless approach that many, these same people, applied in their data day, business life and money ball comes in. IT shows that efficiency, which was already taking hold in the outside world, could do wonders for baseball team.

And that a lot of the statistics that we're being applied in baseball, or not really the best ones, they were not the most accurate predictors of future performance. And so you have this rush among majority owners who see the success of the oakland days with a small payroll who want to do the same thing. The big market teams, the red socks, the anche, all of these teams look around ago. Why are we get beat by these little guys? And so executives who are of an efficiency mindset, who, like jeff leo, might have a machinery background, are suddenly desirable and IT create a culture conflict in the sport where there was an old school way in a new school way. And one of the things that baseball teams and a lot of businesses aren't particularly good at, and certainly warned at that time, is change management, figuring out the right ways to adapt to new styles, implement new method ologies and jeff luna rives in saint Lewis that the cardinals hired him as an executive, and he helps transform their farm system, helps turn the cardinals into modern powerhouse, but rules a lot of feathers along the way.

Now, one might expect a consult, a spread sheet minded executive to be perhaps bookers or stand office. But you've describe jeff luna as charming, correct?

Jeff luna, if you were to have a conversation with them, could knock your socks off. He is charm, and he knows how to manage upwards. He was particularly savic delivering what he wanted to.

Those above him, I think, in a way, the most powerful and and sometimes dangerous people are really the most charismatic. And luna was very media sady. In other words, he knew had to play game. He knew how to curry favor with the public, with the stakeholders that he saw as important. And at the same time, there was another side of him that could treat people working below him very poorly.

There were a lot of people fired when jeff never got to use, and there was a real ripping the bandage bloodletting process, which is every business owners, right? IT was certainly something that had not been done in baseball nearly as aggressively is what the actors had done before. It's a different culture in baseball where employees work incredibly long hours for very little paid.

Is not the case that front office people in baseball making a lot of money outside and perhaps the top executive of scale, you back to office step of people who really do make a lot of acrimony in terms of time and schedule for the reward of saying you work for a baseball team. The reward is not in the amount of money you make. And IT was not a gentle process what was undertaken. And houston, now you are .

covering the astro for the houston chronical in this rebuilding period for two thousand and thirteen to two thousand and sixteen. What was your experience covering the team? Had a luna, either charm or or otherwise. You, what about the owner? crane?

I was a Young, ambitious reporter who was raised ed in new york and had worked at new york papers and in boston. These are major media markets. And you know, I wasn't gonna go into houston throwing softballs. And I think sometimes smaller markets and houston, despite being a very large cities, I have third of fourth and population right now. You know, if media market is smaller and there is a different mentality there, and what the astros and certainly come to expect is favorable coverage.

Jim crane, the owner of the astro, had previously had some messy dealings with the media hit s and very public divorce also has some major scandals previous to the astro in his business life, and did not have a particular taste for reporters who would question what they were doing. And so I wrote a mix of of everything. I wrote what was going on.

There were very cool stories about the name of the aster's databases, which is called ground control. And obvious asa and luu loved giving access to things that made him look good, but forever questions, he did not like IT. And there was a point where I wrote a story about how the industry was looking at the astro sa's outcast.

This was early in my time there. I looked back on IT. And to think I was actually quite ambitious story for a Young reporter.

And next year, I believe je crane, the owner and the head of pr, SAT down with the two top editors at the housing in chronic, and and lobbied to get me removed from the job they want to me fired from covering the astros. So these things happen. They're not uncommon in baseball or outside of baseball, but they did not react well to people who would dare question their methods.

And then even if you did leave the houston chronical assume under your own power, you went to work for nbc sports boston IT was then that you ve got information about the astro science stealing schemes. I'd like to know who tip you off and what they said and what you then did about IT. Yeah.

I did leave the housing chonkina on my own power. I went back to boston, where I come from. I thought I was a Better media market somewhere I could kind of climb.

I was covering the red socks in october of twenty eighteen when I found out from my first time source what was going on and you and what that happened during the two two thousand seventeen world series and in that twenty seventeen season and how they achieved IT. I cannot tell you more than that. The original story that broke the scandal cited four sources. One of them was on the record in pitch, mike fires. But there were three other people whom cameras and fall I spoke with, but needless to say, upon learning what had happened, and this is thirteen months before the story was published and IT was formed, in my first thought, where my mind went was, how do I get this.

well know, thirty months and off a long time? And i'm wondering, how do you get a story into shape so that IT is published? What did you need? What were the ingredients?

Well, I was at the time working for a regional sports network in boston. Regional sports networks as a broad stroke. Are not typically in the business of investigative work. And I started to go down the path of doing a story when I was there still at MC.

IT turns out that for reasons that I believe have nothing to do with this story, that they let me go a few months later, I don't exactly know why october to twenty eighteen is when I learned about a favorite, twenty and fifty and fired. And you look, i'm sitting at home wondering what that was going to happen to my career, the bad job market. And I wondered more than once going to did I pass on what could have been, or or probably would have been the biggest story of my life? And I I was not taken care of myself.

I was not of healthy minor body at the time. And so is very difficult. And sugar question, what ingredients do I need? I needed a job. I needed people behind me who believed in the work and that kind of work. And I very fortunate that I did find that at the athletic with my cale canada s and fAllen, so many editors behind us.

But before this, though, you did write at least a general story on electronic science dealing in november of two thousand eighteen. How was that received?

Nobody cared. IT was a story that was kind of vanky h. IT was pretty inside ball. IT was talking about how the league and league officials were starting to crack down on this because in the twenty eighteen poses and in twenty eight in general, there's a lot of finger pointing in the sport. There was kind of general allegations.

There was one report at dsp n about the astra maybe banging on some garbage cans, but there were no specifics, was just a lot of teams suspicious of one another. And so IT was clearly something that needed to be addressed by the league. And my story was simply discussing how IT could be IT. But not no one cared. The little tibi about the astro I had in there wasn't highlighted and IT wasn't meant to be highlighted.

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So it's the beginning of two thousand and nineteen. You have what you described as perhaps the biggest story of your career, but you've been laid off from N. B.

C. You need to find institutional backing to tell the story. What happens next?

Join the athletic in may of twenty and fifty, and we don't start working on the story right away. And high insight I wish we had, but I was pretty shell shocked. The astra at the time were a jogger, not of a team.

Twenty thousand and actions were a great baseball. And no matter when this story was going to be published, IT was the kind of thing that I was going to take some convincing of the public, of the people behind me. You know, who's gona believe that sitting in my new book, this great franchise, this great story, had actually been cheating?

We needed more sources, and so eventually can rovin phony ze set out to get more. And glad we eventually got a done IT worked out properly. You cannot do a story like that without the right number of sources and confirmation. You can be a maybe on that type of story.

So IT is eventually that you and can begin digging in to the story itself. And I suppose you discovered all sorts of things, one of which is that this whole scheme, which isn't surprising for an organization, LED by jeff luna, who's a data guy, started with an excel bredge called code breaker. If that's where IT started, how did IT evolve.

could break her IT sounds sexier than IT is, Frankly, it's really just a basic log of what pitches the other team was throwing and what sign was put down and something they did excel toward the end of the twenty sixteen season. There is a tRicky line here where if you are in advance reviewing what had happened in a previous game and before your own game, that's legal.

You know, you can look back at a prior games tape and try to track all the signs if you like. What then becomes a problem is if you start to apply that in game, if you are doing that actual logging effort in the middle, the game, uh, using electronics. But so something that was illegal tool to use in advance, not live during a game, created a clear opportunity going to twenty seventeen for something more develop.

And there was a coach who came over, bench coach alex core, now the manager, the boston red socks, and carl beltron, who very briefly became the manager of the new york that never actually managed game because of the scandal. And they were friends, and beltron had been on the anx, and the anchors had conducted a version of electronic science, feeling not something as agreeable as what the actress we're doing. But they get there and there is a push to do something more. And still going up to two thousand seventeen, the system evolved.

but it's not really smooth evolution. There has to be a pretty obvious crossing of the line out of grey area, into not so great area. And I suppose that happened when a video monitor with a life feet to the game was placed in the tunnel at minute made park. And I I believe you saw personal evidence of this, right? How did this decision get made?

So carls, beltron and alex core get to the astro. And beltron certainly knows first time what the anche had done, what the anche had done and what the red socks had done in twenty sixteen was they had used the video room to the code signs, and then they would get that information to the dugout. So for running on second base, the runner would know what the key is to the catchers code.

So the runner is still stealing the sign himself when he's on second base. But he has an aid he knows because of what he told him, the dog out. Okay, that's the third sign.

Two means curbed. He knows that when he get to second basis, he is not to try to figure that out on his own because of live real time decision ing that's been going on. The astro decide we're going to take this a step farther.

We're not gonna just have this work when someone is standing on a second base, we're going to have this work if no one's on base. And we're going to put in a monitor near the dog out that's going to take this camera, feed the camera sticks on the catch. And we're going to have our guys, some staff and some players watch this monitor to code the signs.

And once we know what IT is or have the best guess and what's coming, we will make a noise so that the heater will hear IT. And they made a noise comically by banging on a garbage camp. There was a large garbage can just steps from the asa of dog out.

But this is different than anything that had happened before. What had happened before was all based around, you still needed a guy on second base. This is entirely off the film. This is a camera to a television monitor to someone in the tunnel, making a noise so that the bat can hear IT. And that was the line that was crossed. Both forms of IT are cheating to have a guy in second base who had held from the video system, but the astro system, which could happen at any pitch in real time, to let someone know that coming is considered much more greece.

So then finally, in two thousand and nineteen, you and your colleague can rose to all published the expose on the astro of science dealing scheme for the athletic a few days before your story went to press the rose and all was able to get a hold of a former astros pitch. Mike fires, and I suppose he was a key ingredient here, because he went on the record to confirm science dealing. Many other players did not. Why do you think fires decided to talk? What was the value of him going on the record for your story?

IT doesn't matter what you are reporting on. IT is just a fact of reporting life, that there is Better credibility when people put their names behind what they are talking about and the sources are anonymous. Frankly, there are a lot of that you're not gonna get someone to go on the record for.

And kent, I had three sources. We had reached a point where we were confident in what we had. These were three individuals who knew first hand what had gone on.

And so we were preparing to publish a story. But we were still going to try, if kind of a hail, very well. Let's see if we can find somebody. And kendra and all got my fires in the film, and mike fires was willing to go on the record with us. In the original story, we quoted mike fires explaining that he wanted the game cleaned ed up, that he was tired of IT. Mike fires had moved on to couple other teams, had taken IT on himself to warn those teams when going into guston of what the astro were doing, what they could be facing.

There were their consequences for fires.

I think, in any setting, corporate sports, to have someone discuss corruption, to put yourself in a position, as did happen with my fires, where the public and others against what you're rat now you snatched on us, which I think is totally unfair, you know, whistle blowers, IT takes a lot of courage to do IT.

And I think it's a great burden for someone to decide to step out, particularly in sports, whether is a clubhouse culture and locker room culture in, you know, what happens between us stays with us on my cheese, moon and all that. IT was a bold thing for him to do. I've seen some awful things said about my fires.

Anybody has been kind of tied to this. I think my fires war, certainly the brunt of IT, with people writing about him being a quote and quote rat, and things of that nature, just just ugly stuff. When particular you're in the media, your job should be pursuing the truth.

Your job is not to protect the clubhouse, the environment, your job reality and presenting reality to people. So I don't want to speak for mike, but he saw some ugly stuff. There's no question about that.

So IT sounds like there is some definitely mixed reception to your expose. A but in general, how do you think he was received by the public and and the baseball?

I think most people were outraged. Within hours, john boy, who is a yankee's fan, has turned himself into, you know, full time media member and production company, put together video, backing up exactly what we said in the story. And so the story is circulating, and very quickly afterward, the video is circulating.

And people were just average. Players were outrage. The store comes at november when spring training begins in february, the players couldn't stop talking about IT was like this fire that couldn't be put out.

And now where astra fans angry, of course, but on a whole, people were stunned because there was suspicion among the other players and other teams about what was going on. But there had been nothing concrete, and people were kind of in disbelief that, well, they would do that. They would really go to that level and is a world serious winning team. IT was a draw wing thing for the baseball world.

You mention suspicions about other teams. And clearly your story was about the astra specifically. But you know, rumors were going around about all sorts of teams doing all sorts of things. Were the astro s the only team using technology to gain an edge in the game? No.

definitely timely. They were not the only team using technology. But there is a dividing line that exists between what the astro were doing and what the other teams that we know we're doing, the red socks, the yankees, based on our point of the dodgers, big market veteran teams, strong contending teams.

At the time, I had figured out that they could use this video. We playroom in game to game. Something of an edge in the form that that took was guys would go from the video room with the dog out, say, hey, you get on second base.

This is the code. This is what you need to know. Guy, I get some second base. okay? He knows that is still cheating. And you can argue the former commission of favor and did argue that any cheating is cheating and when we shouldn't be kind of assigning more to different varieties of IT.

But the reality is that within the sport, what the other teams were doing is regarded by most as having piled in comparison to what the astra are doing. Because, again, the asis removed any pretense of having someone on the field of play. IT was entirely off the field of light.

And I think that is why I was so drawing for people, is to think that the competition you are watching, when alex brag men and aster's player swings that a curve ball with two strikes on him, he's one pitch away from striking out, and he hits a home run. And you hear that garbage can hang right before he had said, home run. And there's nobody is standing on second base. I had a is a reaction IT really just kind of spits in the face of competition .

in the court and quote, integrity of the game.

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So earlier in your astro's coverage career, the team tried to get you off the beat, so I imagined they were not thrilled by your most recent reporting exposing them. How did the astro treat you as this all unfolded?

Know the astros at this point and have a leg left to stand on they had during the proceeding post season. So during the twenty nineteen post season had tried to call sports illustrated or reporters steffani e have seen a liar about a totally separate incident from science ceiling that there was an executive with the astro who had screamed in the direction of three women in the clothes.

And this incident gained a lot of attention and LED to the executive of being fired during the post season. But the aster's first reaction, as often was their first reaction, was to try to attack the credibility of the reporter. They were particularly aggressive, a franchise with the media.

When this happened to some the groups out of their hand. At this point, the commission's office, a majority baseball was involved now. And maybe baseball, Frankly, had enough of the astra.

The incident I was just describing and taken away a lot of attention during the two thousand and four season because the commissioner's office is not like when attention is taken away from what's going on on the field during the post season. The post season is the jewels of the baseball season and the asset has been a controversial franchise period. The consultant mckinsey yle culture that jeff luna brought in there had been small controversy. After a small controversy with them and their credibility was gone, they handled a spring training press conference very poorly, did nothing to put out the flames at that point. But media relations is one of the weakest st points about the astro.

So then um the asters are facing the consequences here. What were the consequences though? Did you're reporting or or any investigation find that most of the astro were in on the scheme or only a few?

If you were on that team and in that dog, you knew what was going on, IT would have been very difficult to, unless perhaps you were there for a day or two majorly baseball issues. The maximum allowable fine, and this is maximum allowable as set by the majority constitution, which all the other owners decide and is five million dollars, which IT sounds like a lot of money to the lay person.

IT is not a lot of money in the industry that takes in at the time probably ten or eleven billion dollars a year. Now it's up to about a dozen, but IT was the maximum available fine. There were also draft picks.

The astra first two draft picks in the subsequent drafts were taken away. And that hurts your ability to restock your talent by the fact that the astors were a good team. Those drapes were at the end of the draft order.

And so they are not as valuables that would have been if you had been a bad team. They did not discipline the players. The players were granted community in this process.

The astro did not have their title stripped. They were able to keep the chair on ship. The manager of the team, A J.

Hinter, was fired. The bench coach at the time, who would then go on to the red socks. Alex cora was fired. Carl belle tron, who had taken over the manager, just that same all season, he was fired and jeff luna was fired. So probably the biggest, most impacted happening with the dismissal of four people across three different teams at that point.

But the players themselves escape punishment because man ford believed that if he had tried to punish that the union would have been able to overturn or vacate those punishments. He thought that was going to be a mistake, that he would look weak. IT turns out in the insight that he looks weaker, having not right. The fact that he granted immunity at all is something that he's acknowledge publicly.

probably wasn't the right decision. But in a rare example of the buck stops here, jeff luna was fired, did face some consequences, although the investigation didn't find that he personally really knew a lot about the scheme. Tell us what was discovered and what you think about that.

The investigation appeared to be pretty though, uh, there were tens of thousands of messages reviewed and different cell phones collected throughout the organization. Email, slack, WhatsApp, different things you name IT major baseless department investigations got in there. What the commission of office found is that know the general manager should have been aware of what was going on.

There was not direct evidence, or I guess, conclusive evidence, that jeff leno knew about the science stealing IT is the case that jeff luna m, along with every other relevant asteroids person, was instructed not to delete their cellphone because their cellphones were going to be reviewed in. Jeff UNO did delete his cell phone. Uh, he did that on the excuse that he had personal photos of his wife during childbirth that he didn't want the investigators to see. That is something that after the fact, no one can prove. I think it's a questionable look when your top executive is a racing their cell phone in the middle of serious investigation like them.

So if those were the consequences, were they enough?

I think the outrage of fans in subsequent years has shown that IT was not sufficient players on other teams. fans. IT is the topic that I think it's still perhaps most often talk about.

Why did those guys get anything? Why weren't they suspended? One of the chAllenges would have been figuring out, how do you parcel out those suspensions? How many games do you give hitters versus pictures is a difference.

What about the amount of time you spend on the team? You know, discipline is usually issued for individual cheating in baseball, its performance enhancing drug use, you use steroids, okay? You get an eighty game suspension.

Or what did you do when when is twenty five guys that are given time and and you've had a couple dozen more come through the team throughout the entire season. Rob binford made this choice that if the players union had overturned or vacated these, that he would look weak and that that would be the worst possible outcome. And the fury that fans and and players had about the fact of the ashes were in discipline, I think, is made clear even to the commissioner. In hindsight, that was not the right approach.

but despite their community, these players in your reporting, in the investigation, we're all party to the cheating. How did they justify what they were doing?

I think the players justify cheating the way we see people in corporate amErica justify their current practices while we think someone else is doing IT or perhaps we know someone else's is doing IT. And we need to do this to keep up with only. We were going to succeed.

And there was a warning issued late in twenty seventeen because of the red socks and ankles who had been caught with that lesser scheme at that time. And the astro kept going. They kept going into the post season doing something more agreeable then what the red socks and yanks were doing.

And so they were runaway train in a lot of respect, but they're having success. Why would they stop? And even they're been players who have talked about IT, uh, in those terms. Why would you stop something that's working?

What about players on other teams throughout the league? Once this is uncovered, surely they have feelings of their own.

Players on other teams were in disbelief. Lebron James was tweet about IT, a player from a totally different sport. Look, there are some players who probably were expressing outrage when they themselves have done the lesser version of IT. The los Angeles dodgers lost to the astro in the twenty seventeen world series.

If there is eighteen, and you can look at and say, probably a claim is the most victimized by this, that might be then IT might be the new york ange's who the asters beat in the previous round of the playoffs get to the world series players. And those teams are outraged. And those teams do not have perfectly clean hands because they had used their replyed rooms in ways they shouldn't have. But there is no evidence that the anchors or the dodgers or any other team to this point, to this day, we're doing something on the level of what the asters we're doing, conducting a cheating scheme entirely off the field without anybody on days, without even the pretense of pretending like this was something that was legal or even close to legal.

So you've indicated that. And I understand IT to how difficult and maybe to person out punishment to players depending on how much they were involved in the scheme. But i'm wondering what you think could have been done, what should have been done to really put the true consequences into action for the scandal?

The great failure here that's not often discuss is in the year's prior, the commissioners office, to some degree, the individual foreigners and teams not realizing what could have come from handing these video tools to these hyper competitive individuals to not seeing that after baseball's great performance enhancing drugs scandal, the steroid scandals of the late nineties and early two thousands, that these are individuals who have given an opportunity to find an engine, gain an edge, will take IT.

And the irony of IT is at the commission of baseball, rob man ford was M, L, B, S. Leading figure handling the storage scandal. And it's like he forgot what these players were capable doing, and the league forgot its responsibility to protect the integrity, the sport.

So where do we stand today in terms of the integrity of the sport? In science, stealing the use of technology .

m will be after the science ceiling scandal, put in an electronic solution. The catchers now have the option of wearing a rist device that can communicate with the picture through a little headset and tell the picture what's coming. So you've eliminated the very traditional in some of the iconic act in baseball of a catcher physically giving a sign that the catcher is no longer flashing one, two or three or whatever signal before a pitch.

H, in some instances, IT is not a Mandatory, but that is in place. There are also restrictions around video usage during games of the league issues. Ipad that if players are onna, look at they're swing or how they are throwing in the ball during the game, they have to use these league issue ipad and the dog out.

There are video delays in the clubhouse locker room where players can sometimes going to during the game. But so they put in parameters to try to protect against this kind of cheating in the future. Of course, this is the case. As is often the case in baseball, they did not direct the stop sign, and until there was an accident.

is IT possible to find enough rules, enough regulations, enough firewalls to stop people from seeking and vantage. People are .

always going to cheat in baseball. Outside of baseball, any sport, any corporate setting, there's always going to be somebody trying to get edge. I don't think that in doubt. People are still cheating in some capacity in some way. In baseball, whether we know that IT is .

a different question, and cheating in baseball is as old's this for itself, from the black socks one thousand nine hundred to the drug abuse in the eighties and nineties. Why was this scandal such a big story? I think because .

in modern times there haven't been quite as many team wide cheating scandals. It's because the astro were already a controversial franchise, and they one the world series. This wasn't just some team.

This was the winning team, they supposed best team at the end of an incredibly long one hundred and fifty two came regular season preceeded by a month and half of spring training followed by the post season. And IT feels deceptive to people. I think IT just makes you question whether what you're seeing is real.

And there were rumors um they are not confirmed, but people started wondering what could players be going to the plate with buzzers to know what pitches is coming? And the reality is unless you set up A T S A style body scanner, you cannot prove that I cannot tell you that nobody went to the plate with the buzz. You can't prove the negative, the injury here, the sadness. Part of all of this is that people start asking those kind of questions. You're sitting their doubt in the veracity of what you have watched on the field that night.

And so what should be a joy escape from the real world where you're looking at the Green grass and eating hot dogs and keeping score becomes this game of back and forth questions with your body's? You think they were up to something, what were those guys doing? And that is the damage they have damaged trust that people have that what they're watching is on the level.

Well, evan rela, thank you so much for speaking with me today on american scandal.

thanks.

And that was my conversation with evri, senior writer for the athletic covering baseball is the author, the book winning fixes everything, how baseball brightest st. Minds created sports biggest mess.

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