Rob Manfred Will Not Be Stripping Astros, Red Sox Of World Series Titles
BOSTON (CBS) -- Politicians in Los Angeles really want MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to strip the Astros and Red Sox of the last two World Series trophies and hand them over to the Dodgers. That has always had a zero percent chance of happening, but now Manfred has essentially gunned down L.A.'s request at the plate.
MLB's investigation into the 2017 Astros revealed an elaborate sign-stealing scheme, which ended up costing Houston their manager and GM, $5 million and four high-round draft picks over the next two years. Boston manager Alex Cora was the ringleader of the scheme, with help of then-player Carlos Beltran, and both of them are now out of a job as well. The 2018 Red Sox are also currently under investigation to see if Cora brought his sign-stealing ways to Boston.
Since those last two World Series wins both came at the expense of the Dodgers, the L.A. city council voted on Tuesday to move forward with their request to ask Major League Baseball to strip Houston and Boston of their World Series crowns.
The council members acknowledge that the vote was purely symbolic, so if you're laughing at the notion, you are not alone. And Manfred himself threw a giant jug of cold Gatorade on the idea of stripping the last two World Series champs and just handing the trophy over to the Dodgers.
"There's a couple of problems," the commish said on Fox Business News on Wednesday, according to The Athletic's Evan Drellich. "We haven't concluded our investigation with the Red Sox so it's a little hard to take the trophy away from somebody who hasn't yet been found to do something wrong. We don't know what the outcome of that is going to be.
"The second flaw is, whatever the impact of the sign stealing was, it could have changed who was in the World Series," he continued. "[It's] absolutely unclear that the Dodgers would have been the World Series champion. I think there's a long tradition in baseball of not trying to change what happened. I think the answer from our perspective is to be transparent about what the investigation showed and let our fans make their own decisions about what happened."
Basically, L.A. isn't getting those titles. They know that, but the city council is still going to waste everyone's time because they want to show the world how much they dislike cheating in sports.
