[On September 28th,
1920, four key members of the Chicago White Sox admitted to throwing the
1919 World Series, a pivotal turning point in the unfolding Black
Sox scandal. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy the Black Sox and four other
sports scandals, past and present!]
On one thing
that’s definitely different about the first sports scandal of the 2020s, and
the fundamental question of what’s next.
In many ways,
the epic Houston
Astros video-sign stealing-cheating scandal that engulfed Major
League Baseball and the sports world in those long-ago
days of late 2019 and early 2020 feels quite parallel to the first major
Patriots scandal (Spygate) I discussed yesterday. A successful sports franchise
was revealed to be using video technology to spy on its opponents, both fans and
team officials tried to dismiss the actions as something “everybody
does” (and baseball insiders noted that that was partly true but that this
particular team had gone far
beyond the norm), and substantive, ground-breaking punishments (which were
still seen
by many as insufficient) were levied against the team and its head
coach/manager. Despite the anti-Patriots bias I acknowledged yesterday, I’d be
the first to admit that the Astros scandal was orders of magnitude worse than
Spygate—not least because there’s definitive evidence it was part of, and
almost certainly that it significantly affected, the
playoffs and at least one World Series—but I’m just saying, the broad
strokes of the scandal itself seem familiar within the last couple decades in
sports.
2007 and
2019/2020 aren’t that far apart (even though this year it feels like even 2019
was eons ago), but there’s been at least one hugely prominent societal change
over that time: the rise and dominance of social
media. Of course such media were around in 2007, but they were far from
ubiquitous, and I certainly don’t believe that many professional athletes had
social media presences and platforms. Whereas in 2020 virtually every
professional athlete does, and in response to the Astros revelations many
baseball players used
their social media platforms to make far more direct
and striking statements about the scandal and its aftermaths than we ever
would have seen through official quotes to reporters or press releases or the
like. And I would argue that this ability for the public to get far more raw
and honest responses from players on social media carried over into things like
media interviews, as illustrated by the
comments from the man considered baseball’s best player, Mike Trout; it
seems unlikely to me that in the pre-social media days the player considered
the face of Major League Baseball would have said things as direct as “They
cheated” and (even more surprisingly, as a direct critique of the powers that
be) “I don’t agree with the punishment.” Cheating in some form will always be
around, but social media illustrates how societal changes will affect how such
scandals play out.
If 2020 reveals
anything, of course, it’s that we all too often can’t imagine or even predict the
form such societal changes will take. But while the pandemic and its drastic effects
on the 2020 baseball season has overshadowed the aftermath of the Astros
scandal, I would argue that there’s a fundamentally similar issue at play: a
sense that baseball
has gone astray, has lost both the trust and
the interest of a significant portion of its potential audience. Major
League Baseball isn’t responsible for what has happened to this season, that
is, but as with any of us, what it can control is its choices and actions in
the aftermath, and the widespread consensus is that so far those
choices and actions have further illustrated a sport in serious decline. But
as is the case with America, the future is anything but set in stone, so the
fundamental question is whether and how baseball (like all of us) can learn
from this moment and move forward more successfully. “There’s always next year!”
is a pretty important thing to keep in mind, but one for which we have to actively
work, now more than ever.
September Recap
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other sports scandals you’d highlight?
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