CHICAGO — Talk to anyone involved on either side, and the prevailing public opinion in the game is that everyone has moved on.
“It happened so many years ago,” Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa said.
And then somebody like journeyman reliever Keynan Middleton of the Chicago White Sox brings it up unprompted after finishing off a White Sox win Wednesday night over the Twins by striking out Correa.
“I don’t like him. I enjoyed that,” Middleton said.
Don’t like him? “I mean, he’s a cheater.”
Huh?
Middleton was a rookie with the 21-games-back Los Angeles Angels in 2017, when Correa, José Altuve, A.J. Hinch and the rest of the Houston Astros beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in a World Series later tainted by their 2019-20 conviction by the commissioner’s office for electronic sign stealing — arguably the sport’s biggest scandal in decades for its implications and cost (Hinch and three others lost their jobs).
Middleton was nowhere near the playoffs then or in the subsequent three seasons the Houston Astros were in the World Series and never was a teammate of Correa — who signed with the Twins as a free agent before 2022 and again a few months ago.
If he can bring it up unexpectedly — unsolicited — after an otherwise mundane game on a mundane night in May these years later, will the stain and animus of that 2017 Houston Astros team ever go away as long players from that team, such as Correa, are in the league?
“I don’t know. And I don’t care anymore,” said Correa, who also said he’s heard worse since the scandal broke than what Middleton said.
Scandal that still taunts Houston Astros
In fact, Dodgers fans, it seems will never forget, continuing to taunt the Houston Astros — and ex-Astros — whenever they’re in town. It was a significant enough issue to create discussions during Correa’s free agency this winter regarding the Dodgers’ conspicuous need for a shortstop.
“It’s never going to happen again with any team that I play with, and I’ve moved on from it,” Correa said during a brief conversation with Sportsnaut Thursday morning. “It doesn’t affect me in any way.
“I’ve heard so many comments already that nothing fazes me or the guys I played with anymore.”
By the time the Astros won the World Series last year in their fourth trip during that span, only five players remained from the 2017 title, and two of them left as free agents after last season, leaving only Altuve, Alex Bregman and Lance McCullers Jr.
But even with a new management regime that includes the above-reproach Dusty Baker as the fourth-year manager and two general managers (James Click and now Dana Brown) since Jeff Luhnow was fired, the cheater stain seems to persist even within the game.
Even though teams such as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox were found by the commissioner’s office to also have used similarly illegal electronic methods for stealing signs over roughly the same timeframe.
And baseball insiders whispered at the time about their suspicions involving several other teams that seemed to have insidious systems at their ballparks.
“We know what they did, and we don’t know what they did,” said Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Trea Turner, who helped the 2019 Washington Nationals beat the Astros in a seven-game World Series as the 2017 cheating was being investigated by MLB. “And we don’t know what other teams did or didn’t do. No one’s ever going to have a glass ball to see how much went on.
“It’s kind of like the steroid thing,” Turner added. “You assume things or don’t assume things. … I don’t care about the storylines. Storylines don’t really interest me.”
They did at the time — enough that the Nationals employed multiple sets of signs even with nobody on base during that 2019 World Series, at least in part because of the Houston Astros’ reputation even before the commissioner’s findings.
After the scandal reached its fullest illumination in early 2020 — costing Red Sox manager Alex Cora a one-year suspension and newly hired Mets manager Carlos Beltran his new job for their roles in the ’17 Astros’ cheating — players from the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger and Clayton Kershaw to one-time Dodger Yu Darvish and others slammed the Astros and commissioner Rob Manfred (for giving Houston Astros players immunity and for allowing the to keep the trophy he called “a piece of metal”).
Darvish, who got lit up by the sign-stealing Astros in that World Series, was a Cubs pitcher in spring 2020 when he said the Astros should have been stripped of the title. Kershaw was adamant in an interview with Sports Illustrated the same week: “Sick” of hearing people equate the Astros’ methods with more common forms of sign stealing, Kershaw stressed the “real-time” level of electronic cheating “was separated from everybody else.”
Scandal ‘worse than steroids’
Kris Bryant that spring called the scandal “worse than steroids.”
And Bellinger, the reigning National League MVP in the spring of 2020, unloaded on Houston Astros owner Jim Crane’s “weak” apology and MLB’s “weak” penalties.
“I think what people don’t realize is Altuve stole an MVP from [Aaron] Judge in ’17. Everyone knows they stole a ring from us,” Bellinger said as camp opened in 2020. “I know personally I lost respect for those guys. I would say everybody in the Show, in the big leagues, lost respect for those guys.”
More than three years later, Bellinger has his 2020 ring, a new team and a different perspective when somebody asks about whether the Astros will ever truly shake the stain of their Original Sin regardless of how much they win.
“I’ve got nothing to say, man.”
And Kershaw now: “I’m not gonna talk about the Astros. You’re fishing. But I’m not biting.”
Gotta ask, right?
“I’m not gonna talk about it.”
OK, OK.
Maybe that’s a testament to longstanding baseball tradition on the field among those in uniform, of respecting the power of turning pages and moving on, no matter how bitter the original bad moment might have been. More than a few grizzled lifers have stories of clubhouse fistfights between teammates who eventually won together in October.
Maybe the Astros scandal will eventually go the way Correa, Bellinger and Kershaw have gone with it.
Or maybe this one’s too big, too public, too low-hanging of a shiny fruit to let go. At least for a while longer.
At least until the next 29-year-old, journeyman reliever brings it up again for no apparent, germane reason.
“I guess the reason why I think some people mention is just for a story,” Correa said, “or to stay relevant or whatever. But it shouldn’t be a story anymore.”
Well, maybe just this one last time.
Gordon Wittenmyer covers Major League Baseball for Sportsnaut. You can follow him on Twitter at @GDubCub.