Posted on 01/18/2020 3:43:30 PM PST by nickcarraway
A one-year suspension, $5M fine and loss of 2020 and 2021 first and second round draft picks. That's exactly what the Astros and their manager A.J. Finch and GM Jeff Luhnow received from MLB's commissioner's office. Rob Manfred got the thing right.
Then the Houston Astros took things one step further and fired both their manager and general manager to send a message that they were clearing the slate and escaping once and for-all the cheating scandal that culminated in two World Series berths and one title the past three years.
It was a stern discipline from MLB and the Astros doubled down by firing their architect of a championship winner squad and the skipper to boot.
This was an example to the rest of the league that this type of behavior and skirting MLB's rules would not be tolerated. It's a message that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should have imposed back in 2007 when the New England Patriots were implicated and eventually found guilty of taping their opponents signals to gain an unfair advantage.
The NFL commissioner fined Bill Belichick $500,000, the Patriots $250,000 and docked the team its 2008 first round draft choice.
SNIP
Here we are twelve years later and the Patriots are still engaged in similar types of illegal tactics as they were caught earlier videotaping the Bengals sidelines from the press box. Clearly Goodell didn't go far enough in deterring New England from breaking the rules.
(Excerpt) Read more at si.com ...
But make no mistake, the Astros got slapped on the wrist.
Did anyone notice that the Patriots had the best defense in the NFL and were the second last undefeated team in the NFL. Once they got caught taping in Cincinnati, and couldn’t tape anymore, the team went off a cliff. They lost a playoff game at home against the Titans, and they even lost to the tanking Dolphins. Makes you think.
Wow. Well it seems that firing AJ Hinch and the GM is more than just a slap on the wrist. That’s pretty huge.
LOL!!!
Belichik and Brady live rent free in the minds of the sports conspiracy marketeers.
The players and their union won't let the ownership clean up the cheaters.
And MLB says that there was no Altuve buzzer cheating.
I have no confidence that the players won't cheat again. I'm out.
The Astros' owner did that, not the MLB...
The players weren't punished. MLB handled this poorly.
There’s a gas station here that has a funny sign out front that they change periodically with a new joke. Present sign:
I HAD A NEW SIGN
PLANNED FOR THIS
WEEK, BUT THE
ASTROS STOLE IT.
First of all, MLB did not fire them, they suspended them for one year. The team fired them. The Astros merely had four draft picks taken away from them and a $5 million fine. Any team would give that up for a World Series victory, and another appearance. As of now, Hinch and Cora can get another job in a year. Why even bother.
Why wouldn’t they. MLB has announced they don’t take this seriously.
There's not enough bandwidth in the universe to list out how wrong this thinking is.
As for the Patriots, I had my own response to that particular kerfuffle of a few years back:
Under-Inflated Balls - ©2015 by (((Trevor Patrick)))
(I’m glad the Media has their priorities straight!)
Burned-out Nigerian villages,
and up to 2,000 dead-
the Boko Haram Jihad,
have really outdone themselves this month.
But please excuse our collective yawns:
it’s just Africans being Africans...
Wake us up when they get close to the oil-
‘cause THEN we’ll care a bunch!
And the world is starting to burn,
as we’re dragged into World War III,
but the media is busily telling us,
we’ve got far greater concerns, after all...
We’re getting non-stop coverage,
of the most important story in years:
Holy crap! Stop the presses! The New England Patriots,
have under-inflated balls!!!
* * *
The new Islamic Caliphate,
beheads fifty Christian infidels at once,
because they weren’t sincere and quick enough,
at answering Allah’s demanded Call-
But another collective yawn:
this shit just ain’t important.
Dammit, we need to know the facts,
about the Patriots’ under-inflated balls!
* * *
A Saudi ‘judicial decapitation’,
right in the middle of a parking lot,
two hackings of the sword was what it took,
to silence the woman’s screams of: ‘Haram!!! Haram!!!’
But the editor says: ‘shove that story to the back page-
‘cause we’re interviewing the Kardashians.
We need to get their opinion,
on those under-inflated balls!’
* * *
And on the morning of the seventh of January,
for a brief moment, we all were Charlie.
But then it only took a single day,
for conspiracy theorists to blame it all on the Jews-
but the talk of Mossad false-flags
on the damp floor of the Internet,
and the tepid coverage of Je Suis Charlie
vigils on the Main-Stream Media,
were summarily shoved aside,
for far more earth-shattering news...
Because we gotta flush the Superbowl,
soon, the coverage will be wall-to-wall-
I guess both Charlie and Mohammed,
have under-inflated balls.
* * *
And a fancy hotel is blown up in Libya,
and a new civil war breaks out in Egypt,
and even the willfully blind,
have to admit that the problems are no longer small-
so there’s an announcement from the United Nations,
of an emergency meeting of the Security Council-
Syria, Ukraine and missing planes,
and waiting by the red phone for that terrible call...
And the Secretary General,
has scheduled a press conference at noon,
to release his own Bread and Circuses statement,
about the Patriots’ under-inflated balls.
Same effect whether it was the Astros or the MLB. Who knows, maybe MLB told the Astros do it or we will...
I suppose the fact that Brady had only one reliable receiver had nothing to do with the team’s struggles late in the season?
Also, that one reliable target, Edelman, was playing hurt down the stretch. Brady himself was supposedly suffering from a sore elbow in his throwing arm over the final weeks.
Add to this a lack of consistent running and a middling O-line and you had probably the weakest offense in Brady’s long tenure.
And let’s not even mention Gronk’s well-deserved retirement. He did the right thing — my fellow Polish boy from Western New York got out before he got crippled. He has his whole life ahead of him, and I believe he will have a bright future in anything he undertakes.
They never should have let Amendola and Hogan get away — but the Gods of PC would be outraged if a modern team fielded three white dudes at wide receiver.
The media wanted us to believe this was going to be the “Year of the Black Quarterback” — trying to shame all the Drunk White Fans into believing that blacks should have an absolute lock on every single position, except maybe kickers.
If you want a real NFL scandal, look at the way white players are treated by coaches, managers, and the sports media. Evidently, talent and discipline aren’t enough if you’re a paleface.
Damn shame Luke Kuechly is retiring ... but, the same reasoning applies here as with Gronk. He gave us eight thrilling years of impeccable run and pass defense, and for that we should be grateful.
Wentz would love to have had the receivers Brady had. He made the playoffs with receivers they found on a playground. Granted, he was in a terrible division.
dude! you’re also a WNY’er?
Do you know freeper ‘The Mayor’
Yep, every player who participated should be banned from the game.
Maybe should look at other teams as well.
New version of 8 men out. This is as bad if not worse than steroids.
Pete Rose did far less.
Yep, every player who participated should be banned from the game.
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