What It Means to Cheat
“I used to play 2nd base because I wanted to be like Jose Altuve, the champion of small kids everywhere. How do you think it made me feel the player that I looked up had to cheat to win? It destroyed me.”
When I was a kid, I used to look up to David Ortiz, the big Dominican slugger that played for the Boston Red Sox and won 3 World Series. He was who almost every Dominican kid looked up to in the neighborhood, but in 2016, he retired after an amazing campaign. I lost my role model, and I needed to find another player to look up to.
My search stopped when I watched Jose Altuve play. He had the same small skinny body I had, but was better than 95% of the league and had just gotten to the playoffs in 2015 with the franchise that drafted him after more than a decade of the Astros being out of the playoffs.
Until the end of 2019, Altuve had been the most looked-up player by fans, but this changed in an instant when he was accused – along with the Astros team – of cheating. Everyone thought it was fake because this has not been seen in a decade, and even 13 year old me thought this was fake. But then the evidence came out. This made me lose all of the respect I had for Altuve. He went from my favorite player to my most hated because he just ruined my dream. Even though this was not confirmed in 2019, when Altuve hit a game winning homerun to send the Astros to the World Series, he refused to take off his shirt so that they could throw gatorade all over him to celebrate. Other players and fans have speculated that the Astros were also cheating in 2019. This just made it worse and the player that pushed every small baseball player image just kept getting worse. This just ruined my whole childhood of watching the Astros in just a couple of months.
It is pretty clear to everyone that the Astros have dominated the baseball world from 2017-2023, but what they did in 2017 is something that both children and adult baseball fans will never forget. They stole signs and won the World Series, but even worse, they acted like it was not a big issue. This impacted kids, and adults, but even more; it impacted the baseball players that do not know how good they could've been. The baseball players wonder about the contract they could've gotten if these Astros players did not get inflated ones, and the pitcher stats that were impacted negatively because of the Astros knowing what was coming. But most importantly they cheated, and kids that look up to them like myself lost all of the respect for these players, and it made me think, to be a good small player that can hit homers: do you need to cheat?
This is something that had a major impact around the sport world, and the first reason is because a team that had an advantage over others won the world series. This is not fair to the people that bet money on sport and lost money because the team that they were betting against had an advantage and that was the only reason that they lost. This is a huge issue because it happened at such a high level were player get million of dollar to play their childhood dream, and the hitter knows it a 95 mile per hour fastball is coming, it is easier to hit than someone that thinks it is a 95 MPH hour fastball, but get trick and is really a 80 MPH curveball.
Imagine being a free agent in the offseason after the 2017 season, and then you had to face the Astros. Or imagine being a free agent a year after you were cheating with the 2017 Astros. Teams might have thought you just had a down season when in reality it was that you were now playing fair and could not perform at such a high level without cheating. For example, a player like Marwin Gonzalez got a decent contract in the 2018-2019 offseason, but did not perform anywhere near the expectation the Twins had. Marwin Gonzalez received a more-than-20 million dollar contract from the Twins for 2 years. In baseball, a basic stat that compares a hitter to the league without having to know much about the sport is WRC+, which combines every hitting stat together, adjusts to the ballpark you’re playing in and gives you a number. The average league wide is 100 WRC+; if you're lower than 100 you’re below league average, and if you're above 100 you’re above the league average. ERA+ has the same concept just that it’s for pitching. A player like Wade Miley got a contract from the Houston Astros for 4,500,000 million dollars and performed at a 116 ERA+ and Marwin Gonzalez that same year had a 69 WRC+. This shows how Marwin Gonzalez was providing negative value to his team every time he went up to the plate. It also shows how players from the 2017 Astros were having negative impacts on the contracts that other players were receiving.
The biggest impact that this situation had was the impact that it had on children and teenagers that were really big fans of the Astros and their players. Someone like Jose Altuve sitting at 5 feet, 6 inches and weighing 160 lbs was able to beat Aaron Judge sitting at 6 feet, 7 inches, weighing 280 lbs in the MVP race for the American League.
As a kid this gave me joy and I wanted to play harder because I was really small. I used to play 2nd base because I wanted to be like Jose Altuve, the champion of small kids everywhere. How do you think it made me feel the player that I looked up had to cheat to win? It destroyed me. It was like his whole legacy was deleted because he was the team leader and in the MLB and fans have never hated until then, he had been someone that people respected and looked up to.
In the year 2020 many Astros players were being plunked(Hit by a pitch intentionally) and in after 2021 when covid had slowed down and fans were allowed in games every time a Astros got up to the plate he was being boo. Astros players influenced childrens to cheat by using trash bangs to say the pitch that was coming. The role model of the MLB started being called a cheater and no one looked up to him anymore. Also, these players did not receive a fair punishment and this impacted kids as well because they saw that players could cheat and not get any punishment that will really affect them. Kids saw how they could cheat as well because if there is no big punishment in the MLB what punishment will they receive in schools or in their sports games. This is something that the MLB should have made an example for everyone and show how cheating is not something that should happen in sports or in real life, even though they did something good because they suspended the managers, and made them give an apology. But, that is not enough. I believe players should have gotten punishment as well because they are grown men and could make their own choices.
This Cheating Scandal is very timely because it’s something that will be remembered, until baseball is over. This is like the cheating scandal of the White Sox that happened more than a century ago but people still remember it. Pete Rose, who bet on games and was banned from baseball, has the most hits in MLB history, but heis not a part of the Hall of Fame because of betting. But, the Astros that cheated and changed what was happening in the game only punishment was 4 draft picks and international money. This is mindblowing and players and coaches should have received harder punishment because that was basically stealing a World Series ring from the Dodgers. The 2017 season will always be remembered as the what if season? What if the NY Yankees could have gotten number 28? What if the Dodgers could have won their first World Series since 1988?
This is something that does not just impact baseball;it also shows how far role models can fall. We often place our trust in people we don’t fully know. It’s important because it shows how low the morale of these players must be that they would throw their dignity away in exchange for money and an unearned World Series ring. It makes me think: if even these professional players would be willing to do such a thing, what does that mean for us?