Good morning to all and Happy Wacky Wednesday y'all! The last couple of days have been very discouraging to sports fans to say the least. In light of what some are calling "cheating" and others are calling it just part of the game. In today's Wacky Wednesday Wisdom I want to shed light on why it is cheating and why so harsh the consequence? To be fair, this is coming from a "sports" fan and NOT some "blowhard" Rangers fan as some might say. So if you are going to get your feeling hurt or as mom would say growing up: if you can't stand the heat then get out of the kitchen.
First and foremost, if you have been living under a rock over the last two days two of the largest major league baseball teams have let go or fired staff that was directly involved in stealing signs by means of electronic equipment. Those two franchises are the Houston Astros with the stiffest of the penalties both the manager and GM were ultimately fined by MLB and the let go not hours after the hammer came down. Not only were they fined but they lost the 1st and 2nd round picks in the 2020 and 2021 MLB draft and were fined 5 million dollars. Some fans see this as being harsh as others see this as being not so harsh. Let's look at both sides of the coin while we are at it: Harsh fans say it is harsh because evidently the GM or the manager did NOT know what was going on. I have to squash this argument right there as the MLB papers say while both the GM and manager did NOT have direct involvement in making it happen they did NOT stop it. I can totally get where those fans are at on the equation but it makes in NO LESS wrong than the guys doing the cheating. For the ones on the it wasn't harsh enough fence which at times has included myself this is one of the harshest penalties MLB has ever handed down. Do you want them to give back the World Series? Guess what! Wasn't going to happen because even during the steroid days they didn't take the title away. I do think overall they could have added to the penalty of this with an addition of a few years without being able to sign a free agent. But what do I know right? I am just a "blowhard" Rangers fan who sees things the way they should be. On the second side of the equation you have Alex Cora who was directly involved with the "sign stealing" scheme being fired as well from Boston but never directly apologizing. The hammer was going to come down on Cora and the Red Sox wanted nothing to do with it so they made the wise decision and canned him.
Why is this considered cheating? For some fans "sign stealing" has always been a part of the game and even MLB has publicly stated that it is a direct part of baseball. The cheating part is when the organization knowingly and willingly used and moved cameras closer and used monitors in the dugout during the season to relay those signs. But why is it cheating? It is cheating because the commissioner of baseball Mr. Manfred publicly stated a couple of years back that any team that used "technology" to steal signs would be "harshly" penalized. A certain MLB team took it above and beyond to win the title even though they didn't need to. The worse part of this is coming from Cora who was at best a mediocre MLB player has publicly stated that one MLB great told him: the scoreboard is NOT for the fans it is for the players. You can always directly affect the games outcome if you are willing to find ways to "steal signs". Let me afford you sports fans that don't see this as cheating an example: if I was to approach your wife and "make-out" with her while you watched: would the first thing that came to your mind is how long has she been "cheating" on me? But then you approach her privately and she says: I'm not cheating on you he's just a better kisser than you. Is it still NOT cheating? One last analogy: your child is taking a test at school and knowingly let's a friend look at his/her paper and the teacher catches them? Is that NOT cheating? The arguments that are being made for teams(this includes all sports) in sports to cheat no matter who they are seriously not even relevant.
Lastly, I am coming down on all sports teams I don't care who you are. If you are caught cheating then you should be punished, period end of discussion. I have said this many times in multiple other blogs that I am SICK AND TIRED of the cheating that goes on in professional sports and am NOT AFRAID TO CALL anyone of them out no matter who that team is. It is time that we stand up as fans and those who love sports and DEMAND no less than perfection without cheating on their parts. Is that too much to ask? Instead these sports teams no matter who they are want to "smear" their reputation for a trophy and rings that could be had at five and dime and the candy machine. Simply put if you are playing any of the sports right then I commend you and if you are trying to find a way to win through means of "cheating" then I don't want to be associated with you or your team...PERIOD!
With that being said that is this week's installment of Wacky Wednesday Wisdom. As you can see there is a problem with cheating and we as parents need to stop it and call out the cheaters before they ruin the world of sports(if they didn't already). Again, I want to thank you all for the kind words and encouragement. Until next week have a Happy Wacky Wednesday Y'all!