 The Athletic, in an exclusive story by Evan Drylock and Ken Rosenthal, have uncovered the fact that through the 2017 season, the Houston Astros were stealing signs electronically, which is illegal in their home games. And you can say, well, that's just, you know, spy gate, you know, with the Patriots, it was, you know, one guy said, did they have anybody really on the record? They have a guy on the record, a guy that was on the team, Mike Fires, a pitcher, who laid out exactly what they do. And remember, Yankee fans, if you want to get angry, the Yankees lost every single game at Minute Maid Park in the 2017 ALCS. And the last two games, they couldn't score a run. So here's how the Astros did it. They positioned a camera in center field that was zeroed in on the catcher signs. Okay. That camera had a direct feed to a monitor that was put on the wall between the dugout and the clubhouse, so essentially in the runway. There would be people standing there throughout the game, trying to decipher the signs. And once they got the signs, what they would do is they would bang a metal garbage can when they saw the sign for breaking ball or change up. So the batter knew when it wasn't going to be a fastball. And if he didn't hear a sound, he could sit on a fastball. And it worked because the Astros won the championship. Now you could say they won game seven in LA. Okay. Yeah. They're also a pretty good team, but they have espionage somewhat behind them. Now, so many people in baseball talk about the fact that the Astros steal signs illegally. And that's why I don't think they do as good a job of it anymore, because even if there's nobody I'm based on, when the Yankees are playing the Astros, all they do is they put down multiple signs. It's hard to decipher, even if you have a camera trained on the catcher. So you can also say, well, the Washington Nationals won all four games at Minute Maid Park. Yeah, they did, because I don't think it's as effective anymore because of the fact that people now put down multiple signs. Also, Michael, in any kind of conspiracy, it's probably smart to change it up as you go along, right? So after you win the championship in 2017, wouldn't logic tell you, okay, we're going to have to come up with something else? Because players are going to leave, members of the organization are going to move on, people are going to get hit to it. We're going to have to change it. We're going to have to come up with a different way. And maybe they did, or maybe they just stopped doing it all together because they were just afraid that eventually they would get caught. So maybe they didn't do it this year. Maybe they didn't do it the year before. Here's a question. Do you think it's cheating? Well, yeah, it's cheating. Especially with electronic stuff. Now, if you have somebody in the dugout that can decipher the signs, or if you've got somebody standing at second base that can see what the catcher is putting down, I think that's gamesmanship. But once you get to electronics and banging off a trash can, and now I think it's different. I think if you can catch it from where you're seated in the stadium, you're just staring at it, and you figure it out, that's gamesmanship. Now, I think once you add these other systems, it's straight up cheating. Now, it's not foolproof because Minutemade's one of the loudest buildings in the league. Yeah, they said it wasn't effective during the 2017 World Series because it was so loud they couldn't hear the banging of the trash can. I'm sure it was loud in games 6 and 7 against the Yankees too. So is it possible that they tried to do it and it wasn't heard? It's not deafening like in the first six innings. No, that's true. But the fact is it's cheating. So what do you do about it? If we find this out, and it's like to the level of Spy Gaten, in some ways it might even be worse than Spy Gaten. I think it's worse. Because you're talking about something that's actually happening in-game rather than collecting knowledge. It's something that you're doing within the game. And you know how baseball players feel about stealing signs in general. Like what I described to you, Peter, about from the dugout or the guy at second base, they don't even like doing that. They look at that as like a form of cheating. So if you do it using electronics, it's clearly cheating. Absolutely. So taking draft picks away, suspending members of the front office, what is that going to do with the end of the day? It's going to be interesting though. Because Major League Baseball is investigating Astros because of the guy Talbin who shouted the thing at the female reporters. So he's been fired. Who knows if he flips on the Astros. And I've always thought like Don too, how do you cheat something like this with Espionage when you lose players? So Mike Fires was not tender to contract at the end of 2017. Well, you don't say. So he was a little chap. But he also said he's been on the A's and the Tigers. He said, and he told them exactly what was going on with all the players. He said, because when you're cheating like that, the young players get affected and they lose jobs because of it. He said, you can have a young pitcher who doesn't know what's going on, gets knocked around first two, and he gets sent down to the modern leagues, might not ever be called up again because they had the signs. See now, that's another angle to it. Yeah. That you're not just playing with the scores in a game, but people's livelihoods. Yeah. That's, that's tough. Right. Now, Michael, you've always said that whether it's, you know, pintar on the bill of the cap and managers letting it go because, hey, we're cheating too. I wonder if baseball were to do an investigation and tell all the other owners of Major League Baseball, we're going to investigate this and we're going to kind of go around baseball and check things out. Whether they say, you know what, let it go. Because they're afraid their system might be found out. Right. You know, so I'm wondering what baseball's appetite is to catch the Astros in the first place. Like, is it better for them to do the investigation and say they found nothing than to actually say that they found something, that the Astros compromised the championship, but all we can do is take draft picks away. I mean, has that helped the game of baseball? Think about the lives that changed too. Let's say that they had the signs for the Yankees in 2017. If the Yankees go to the World Series and win the World Series, is Jojo already still the manager? Of course he is. No, house timers come on the air and say they're going to make a change no matter what. But boy, the pressure would be on to change if they won the World Series. I mean, a lot of lives change. A lot. Well, everything changes, Michael, because now you're talking about an Astro team that they lost to the Red Sox last year and they lost to the Nationals this year. But they still won a championship. If they didn't win that championship in 2017, we're kind of talking about a team that Bride's made never a bride. They can't win the big game. They can't win the championship. Contract extensions happen because of that championship. Guys may be looked upon differently for their careers because they won the championship there. It affects everybody. And also, you know, we look at Altuve as this amazing player. We look at Springer and everybody that's on the Astros. Do we look at them differently if we found out that they were getting the signs? Like, so it is a colossal story here, but it doesn't seem like the punishment will fit the crime because what can they do? They're not going to take the championship away from the Astros. No, no, but they're going to take draft picks away. So they'll take some draft picks away. Listen, the Patriots lost a bunch of draft picks. They just kept marching along, kept winning championships. So if Spygate actually did work, other than the effect of their reputation, which I'm not sure Bill Belichick cares about anyway, didn't stop them from going out there, still being the best football team in the league. So if baseball punishes the Astros and they keep winning, yeah, people will say they're cheaters and people will try to claim that the 2017 championship is Fugazi. But at the end of the day, didn't end up being worth it. You won a championship, everybody made their money, and losing draft picks at the end of the day is probably worth it. I wonder if baseball would ever do anything like the silliness that they do in the NCAA where they vacate titles. Alright, so how does that help baseball? You can't give the championship to the Dodgers. They wouldn't even want it. Would you want your championship? You lost, but because of some kind of move violation, we're going to give you the championship? Yeah, but maybe they could say, well, we lost because they were cheating. I understand that. So maybe they would take the championship. But would you, as a Dodger fan, really feel like you won a championship when you didn't do it on the field and celebrate it? Even if you got the championship, you're two years removed from it. Peter, wouldn't that look like a kind of stained championship? No one's going to be... Would you want that? Would you celebrate it now? Have a parade? All of a sudden everyone's wearing goggles and you have a parade? Yeah.