Tom Brady has left New England, and yet once again Boston has found itself a public enemy of the sporting universe.
In Boston, the Red Sox did nothing wrong and Major League Baseball vindicated them with just a slap on the wrist on Wednesday.
Everywhere else, the 2018 Red Sox were cheaters who deserved a harsher punishment, should have their title taken away and better be ready for relentless booing at visiting parks when baseball eventually returns.
As often is the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
No, the Red Sox shouldn’t lose their title. They shouldn’t have an asterisk next to their name in the history books. They were an outstanding team, one of the best in recent memory, and we don’t have enough evidence to suspect that they were largely that good because they were cheating.
Just like we don’t know how many teams were illegally stealing signs in 2018. Surely, they weren’t the only ones.
But the Red Sox got caught. They admitted to some level of cheating. And they are repeat violators.
“I have received absolute assurances from the Red Sox that there will be no future violations of this type,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said after the Apple Watch scandal in 2017.
Then the Red Sox violated the rules again, doing the same thing, albeit via a different method, and illegally using technology to steal signs the very next year.
Is it really that hard for those of us in Boston to understand why sports fans everywhere else are going to look at the Red Sox through a skeptical lens for the foreseeable future?
“We need to earn back trust,” team president Sam Kennedy said Wednesday.
Of course they do. And it starts with accountability.
That the entire scheme to move the video replay room next to the dugout, put J.T. Watkins there during games, have him decode signs and transfer that information to the players (sometimes by circling the signs on paper to covertly alert nearby players without drawing the attention of an MLB fair play official) and then transferring that information to the hitter was somehow entirely done by Watkins, and Watkins alone, without the knowledge of anyone on the coaching staff or in the front office, is truly difficult for anybody to believe.
“I do think our players know the difference between right and wrong,” Kennedy said.
Right would be players standing up and being accountable at some point when baseball gets going again. Wrong would be shrinking away from the situation and continuing to stubbornly defend the idea they played totally fair, leaving Watkins out to dry as the lone criminal mastermind.
It’s easy for many of us to see how players could get lured into a sign-stealing charade that continued to push the boundaries of legality. It’s legal to steal signs with video before and after the game, or to do so during the game as long as you’re not using technology. But hey, if the video room coordinator is doing it and not you, that’s not technically cheating, is it?
Well, of course it is.
“You wouldn’t be doing it if you didn’t think it would give you an advantage,” said Red Sox General Manager Brian O’Halloran. “I think it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.”
The Red Sox cheated to gain an advantage and they admitted it.
“Because the sign was received in an impermissible fashion, the rule is broken, and that’s wrong,” Kennedy said. “But in no way do I think it’s appropriate to invalidate the accomplishments of the 2018 team based upon this infraction.”
And this is where the Red Sox will lose people from every other sports city in the country.
How can one side of the mouth admit there was cheating and an unfair advantage, while the other side says nothing about the title is tainted? How can the Red Sox say they won fair and square after also admitting they violated a rule?
They did not win fair and square. And while MLB said they had no evidence the Sox also violated the rule in the postseason, that’s a far cry from clearing them completely. The Sox certainly could have cheated in the postseason, too. There just isn’t any evidence. Nor is there any evidence to suggest they didn’t.
“I do feel a sense of relief,” Kennedy said.
He thanked Manfred and MLB for the report.
Why would the Red Sox say thank you for spending four months investigating them, taking away their second-round draft pick and suspending their video replay coordinator?
We know why.
That doesn’t mean the season is tainted. But fans around here better get used to the skepticism from other fans around the country.
It’s warranted.
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