As if the Houston Astros haven’t already been thrown under the bus, backed up over, and then re-run over, the New York Yankees are here to enjoy the view. General manager Brian Cashman did not hold back to defend the sanctity of the game and protect the Yankees from any allegations and potentially harmful attention.
In an interview with YES Network, Cashman stated that he had been suspicious of the Astros’ cheating scandal for quite some time:
“We’ve done our due diligence and tried to do everything we could, and have done everything we can to try to protect our signs as much as possible,†said the Yankees GM. “We’ve continued to evolve over the course of time because of you know, concerns.â€
“I think for a long time teams, we’ve all been kind of guarded against the unknown of what exactly is going on out there, especially with the explosion of technology,†said Yankees manager Aaron Boone. “Hopefully we’ve put an end to this and cut it off finally.â€
With Houston being a target for months and multiple reports surfacing of their involvement in illegal activities, it was only a matter of time before the mighty hammer of Robert Manfred came crashing down on an organization that had reached two consecutive World Series, winning one of them.
New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone was taken aback by Manfred’s nine-page report detailing the Astros’ scheme:
“It’s disappointing. Frustrating. Frankly, I spent a couple days trying to get my head wrapped around the emotions that I was feeling about it,†said Boone.
However, some would say that the cheating scandal might be a good thing for the evolvement of baseball, but Cashman is just happy someone was willing to speak out.
“Baseball is now determined — with the strongest instance of Mike Fiers coming forward and being a whistleblower — to really shed light on some of the things that were occurring down in Houston,†said Cashman.
Baseball is a historic sport with delicate intricacies, and finding minor advantages is part of winning. Every sport has loopholes in the system, but abusing them with secret cameras and televisions breaks the nature of the game. What the Astros participated in and subsequently the Boston Red Sox as well, deserves punishing, and to be quite frank, they’re lucky the consequences weren’t more severe.