Boy, is everyone lucky that the Astros didn't make the World Series
"Everyone" includes but is not limited to Giants fans
The Astros cheated their way to their 2017 World Series title, then exported their cheating to the 2018 Red Sox, who used it to win a Series of their own. The Astros front office was penalized, and their then-coaching staff was penalized, but the players had received leniency for telling the truth, and so they were allowed to continue their careers undisturbed, playing baseball professionally like they had been before.
The 2020 Astros finished the regular season 29-31, with a winning percentage that in a real baseball season would have kept them out of the playoffs. But Rob Manfred expanded the playoffs this year, and they made it in, and they beat a legendarily awful postseason team (the Twins), and then they beat a legendarily awful postseason team (the A’s), and then, despite spotting the Rays the first 3 games of the ALCS, they made it to Game 7 before falling short.
Imagine a world where they didn’t fall short. Imagine the Houston Astros, Total Cheating Cheaters Who Cheat Because They’re All Cheaty And Whatnot, playing in the World Series for the third time in four years.
It would be awful. I don’t mean just for Giants fans, who would have to choose between rooting for the Dodgers — a violation of the Geneva conventions — and rooting for the team that has absolutely earned its status as Baseball’s Villains. I mean for everyone who pays attention to baseball, because the story of the Astros just wouldn’t ever stop.
It would dominate the day-before media coverage. It would be all over the pregame show. “The Astros are out for redemption!” When they won a game, the story would be, “Astros proving they’re more than a scandal.” When they lost, it would be, “Is all the pressure to prove themselves weighing too heavily on the Astros?”
There would be neverending armchair psychoanalysis of Jose Altuve, and Carlos Correa, and Yuli Gurriel, and Bregman, and Springer, and whoever else has stuck around since 2017. There would be a whole video package in one of the games centered around Correa in a press conference a few weeks ago, defiantly asking, “What are they going to say now?”
Joe Buck would say, “There’s nothing you can say. Carlos Correa has proven what kind of player he is, and he’s done it on the biggest stage in baseball.” He’d then toss it over to Ken Rosenthal, who would open by saying, “That’s right, Joe. Carlos Correa and the Astros have been through a lot, but now that they’re here…” and then it would be a bunch of stuff that no one other than Astros fans wants to hear.
But instead…we’re not going to have that. It would be comically easy to overstate how awful that would be, or how much better our lives will be without it, and it’s not something any of us will appreciate in the moment during the games,
As a Giants fan, you can root for the Rays with a slightly elevated amount of guilt for supporting a team whose raison d’être is to supresss player salaries, but not, like, an Astros-level elevated amount of guilt. A Dodgers-Astros series would have been a truly nightmare scenario: One where the Dodgers undoubtedly had the moral high ground. If nothing else, Rays, thank you for sparing us that fate.
By the way, Kevin Goldstein, who suggested using cameras to steal signs in 2017? Still with the Astros. This is not an organization with any intention of excising the rot that has stained the franchise’s reputation. They deserve every bit of the online vitriol they receive, and then some.
It is an unequivocal good that we don’t have to hear the Astros players talk about how unfairly maligned they have been over the last few years. It is an unequivocal good that we don’t have to hear the media talk about it either. And being spared from the Impossible Rooting Interest World Series, that’s a blessing.
The Astros are the villains of baseball. They should be. We can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the villains have been defeated, at least for another year.