Giving Astros players immunity was Rob Manfred’s ‘best decision ever’

If you are against sign stealingthen you can’t be a pro-AI. The Houston Astros may have been the biggest offender when it came to modernizing cheating, but they also pioneered the advances and essentially got away with it before the people who determine what is and isn’t moral changed their methods for considered immoral. Telling someone, “You better know that!” before what they “should know” is technically illegal falls into a gray area that America is built on.

So you can add MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s admission that granting Astros players immunity as if they had just won a quick fire “may not have been my best decision ever,” given his long list of numerous errors.

“I’m not sure I would have granted immunity to the players,” Manfred said an interview with Time. “Once we’ve given players immunity, you don’t know what exactly you would do in terms of punishment.

“I might have started the investigative process without being granted immunity and see where that takes us. First of all I will not punish anyone, maybe not my best decision ever.”

Manfred’s comments will not mollify a fan base, and beating around resentments/mishaps for which he has not been held accountable is a form of flex.

“Hey, remember the time I called the World Series trophy ‘a piece of metal’ and let the biggest cheating scandal since the ’90s simmer so long that sign theft was on the Astros’ scouting report? Man I really screwed that up.”

Is there any other incriminating evidence? Manfred would you like to get rid of him while he’s on the record? Do you want to pay tribute to Chappaquiddick, too, or what?

Never admit you’re wrong

Even if Manfred was too lenient with the Astros players (he wasn’t), for New York Yankees fans it’s too little, too late, and since the pinstripes are baseball’s moral compass, they will never give that up and probably will until finish grave. Other bastions of the unwritten rules (aka self-righteous players too stupid to trick the system) are still upset about this too and need to stop berating Carlos Correa.

It’s not his fault that he made millions and won a title using a Ponzi scheme. If the Yankees had been better at stealing signs, they might have weathered this current title drought. That might read like I’m pro-Houstonbut I promise it’s all against New York.

At the end of the day, the season and In the age of deceit, the responsibility of catching the bad guys rests with those in charge. Perhaps Houston would have known better if the commissioner had updated the rulebook accordingly.

Instead, they took an ambiguous rule and interpreted it as loosely as possible. “Forgiveness, I didn’t know I couldn’t do this“was a great punchline to this Dave Chappelle joke, because the claim of ignorance is quintessentially American.

Be it using AI for an opening sequence during a writers’ strike, using exploitative labor to build generational wealth, using people’s personal information to sell digital ads, or using cell phones and trash cans to steal signs – this was no different than any other offenses had not yet been criminalized. And the fact that the players got away with immunity? You could call her actions brazen, but I’d say brave, and I’m sorry, I thought we lived in the land of the free.