Yesterday, new Houston Astros manager Dusty Baker, pleaded MLB to protect his players from being beaned by their opponents. If MLB would have acted the way it should, this plea would not even have been necessary.
With Thursday’s press conference by the Astros in which José Altuve and Alex Bregman apologized and also owner Jim Crane “apologized” it became clear the club doesn’t feel sorry at all.
As a result, several players gave their opinion on the farce and made clear they did not oppose to deliberately throwing at the Astros’ batters. And of course, those cheating players deserve this. If MLB doesn’t want to punish them, players will take matters into their own hands.
As a result, Dusty Baker fears his players to be targeted by their opponents and asked MLB to take action. Normally, a pitcher that beans the opponent deliberately should be tossed and you can count on it that will happen when an Astro will be beaned on purpose. But by punishing pitchers who will do that, it clearly shows, MLB has double standards.
Of course, the governing body of professional baseball showed it has double standards as it banned the players of the 1919 Chicago White Sox for life as it did with Pete Rose as well. Is what the Black Sox and Rose did more serious than the sign-stealing of the Astros? I dare to disagree. But since there are more clubs that are blamed for sign-stealing the way the Astros did, it would affect all of MLB with crippled rosters as a result.
But if things at the diamonds will get out of control, MLB can only blame itself. The non-Astro players feel the same way as many non-Astro fans: MLB punished the wrong persons. And if MLB won’t punish those who need to be punished, players will do it for them.
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