Tattoos Are Forever…and I Guess World Series Titles Are Too

World Series games aren’t allowed to start at a normal hour.  They have to conclude so late that small children cannot be exposed to the rampant cheating happening in the game.  

OK, bad start…  Let’s try again.

World Series games aren’t allowed to start at a normal hour.  They have to air at a time that receives the most viewership across the country to ensure that a maximum profit has been made off of crowning a new champion.  So when game seven of the 2017 World Series ended it was close to midnight. I was sitting in the same chair I had sat in during game five because watching game six sitting on the couch didn’t work out.  Yes, I’m THAT superstitious baseball fan. I had worn an Astros shirt under my work clothes all that week as well.    

Throughout the game I was doing my best to temper expectations.  I’ve experienced heartache in the past (game 3 of the ‘05 World Series and the Greg Abbott tweet game against the Royals in 2015) and would experience more heartache in the future (game 7 this past year and last week’s Texans/Chiefs game).  I’ve learned to not get my hopes up thinking my team is going to win. For some reason though game 7 in 2017 did not crush all my hopes and dreams like I anticipated it would. Somehow my team finally won.

The first three texts I sent as soon as the game ended were obvious.

1. My Dad
2. My brothers
3. My tattoo artist    

OK, some were more obvious than others.

A few years ago I did something I’ve been telling myself I was going to do since I was about 14.  I got an Astros logo tattooed on the top of my arm. The fact that it resides just above another tattoo that bares my children’s names in it tells you just how important the Astros have been to me my entire life.  Is it dumb to get the logo of a baseball team tattooed permanently on your arm? Probably. What if they do something stupid someday that could permanently tarnish their legacy and force everyone brandishing their logo to be called a cheater?  I don’t care…  

Quick story: My wife and I along with two of our friends had Texas Rangers season tickets in 2013.  I wore an Astros hat to EVERY GAME I went to that year. EVERY. GAME. Yes, 2013 was the first year the Astros were in the AL West.  Yes, the Astros resembled at best a AAA team that went 51-111 that year including going 2-17 against the Rangers. If I can live through that, I can live through anything.

Anyway…I texted my tattoo artist.  I sent him a picture of a World Series trophy and asked him to recreate it for me.  Four days later he put it on the corner of my shoulder adjacent to the Astros logo with “2017” written vertically next to it. 

I had been picturing it in my mind ever since the first game of the World Series, and I couldn’t have been happier with how it turned out.  My friend, an avid Rangers fan, was at my house when I got home from the tattoo parlor. His first words were, “that’s stupid” followed by “damn I wish I could get one of those”.  

Fast forward a couple of years to this past Monday.  We all knew that Rob Manfred was going to “make an example” of the Astros.  I anticipated something harsh like strong suspensions and hefty fines. When those were announced I wasn’t surprised, and I was glad we could begin to get it all behind us.  What did surprise me though is everything that came next.

Let’s get some “facts” out of the way:

1. Was what the 2017 Astros did deceitful to other teams and their fans?  Yes.
2. Were there other teams in the league probably doing the same thing?  Yes.
3. Was it the right move to fire Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch?  Yes (dang, that hurt to type).
4. Does this tarnish the 2017 World Series title?  Yes (that hurt A LOT more).
5. Should the 2017 World Series title be retroactively awarded to the Dodgers?  Cue the “ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer” response.

The fact that there are government entities wasting taxpayer dollars using their time to argue that their city should be awarded the title, or that Congress should get involved in this is more asinine than the idea that wrinkles on a jersey are evidence that players wore two way receivers that would buzz when a particular pitch was coming.  

In the end, we cannot go back in time.  Nothing is going to change how exciting it was to watch the Astros score in the 8th and 9th innings of game 2 to tie the game, then see both teams score a total of seven runs in extra innings.  Nothing is going to change when I woke up my two year old, nine month old, and their VERY angry Mother (a scorned Rangers fan who was only asleep because her team wasn’t in it) when I was yelling at the TV the moment the Dodgers scored three in the top of the 9th during game 5.  Nothing is going to change when I woke them all up AGAIN an hour later when Alex Bregman knocked in Derek Fisher in the bottom of the 10th to win.  

That October started with the Twins scoring three runs in the top of the 1st of their Wild Card game, looking like they could finally put the kibosh on their inability to beat the Yankees in the postseason (they didn’t…and still haven’t).  It ended with seven unbelievably exciting games that went back and forth, including two of the most exhilarating extra innings games ever played. It was one of the most thrilling, nerve wracking, and exasperating months of my life. I sat at the only spot at the conference table where my boss couldn’t see my screen during meetings.  She thought I was looking at the meeting agenda but I was actually watching the ALDS (sorry Kim). I thought the season was over when Gary Sanchez hit a HR in the bottom of the seventh during game five of the ALCS, but somehow the Astros came back to win games 6 and 7 (insert “because they cheated” rant here from the people who have come to hate the Astros in the past week).  And memories of all the games at the Astrodome when I was kid came flooding back the minutes before Corey Seager hit a “ground ball to the right side” that ended it all. It was poetic in a way that only baseball can be, culminating for me on a cold Sunday afternoon sitting in a tattoo chair. What an amazing time.

Unfortunately, now everything has changed…

I’ve always found the words of Polonius in Hamlet to be inspiring, and I quote him often.  He said the famous, “this above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”  Yes, for you Shakespeare fans, there is a subtle irony in quoting someone who acted as a spy in this situation.    

I think we all like to think about the professional athletes that we watch and sometimes look up to as good people.  Sometimes it’s obvious when they’re not, but other times the public can be deceived. I would like to think that the players I have come to love so much would be true to themselves and not want to cheat the game, but in the end I don’t know them personally and cannot judge that.  The thing that hurts the most from all of this is the fact that it looks like they aren’t who I hoped they were.

You will hear the “but everyone else is doing it” argument everywhere.  Sure, other teams are doing the same thing. The only difference between them and the Astros is they didn’t get caught…yet.  

To me I think it all comes back to riot ethics.  What would you do if there were a riot? If you were on Florence Avenue in South Los Angeles in April of 1992, would you have been looting and stealing from others?  What do you do when everyone else around you is doing something, but you know it isn’t right?  

A.J. Hinch decided he would break the monitor that facilitated the cheating to show his displeasure.  He did this TWICE, but it continued to happen. “To thine own self be true” was explaining A.J. as he did this, but it wasn’t enough.  This is just a prime example of an ineffective leader. A boss walking around the office with no way to control what is actually happening akin to the old “inmates running the prison” metaphor.  Now, was it possible that he wanted to stop it but those above him told him not too? Yes. Even still, it was his responsibility to stop it, or remove himself from the situation altogether. In the end, that’s the reason I felt it was the right move to fire him.  

I hate saying that.  A.J. Hinch is (by my estimation based on everything I see and read) a good person, and a great baseball manager.  I also hate the idea of any talk of tarnishing a world series won by a team that had the talent to win it whether they were cheating or not.  However, there is nothing we can do about it now.  

Polonius was no saint.  He was eventually killed by Hamlet (spoiler alert) as he was spying on him for King Claudius (Hamlet actually thought it was Claudius behind the curtain…but you understand the premise).  However, his words can be applied to everything that has happened in Major League Baseball over the last 30 years. The scandals surrounding players taking performance enhancing drugs and stealing signs with illegal video monitors are the opposite of “thou canst not then be false to any man.”  

The game I love seems to be falling apart, but this too shall pass.  Unfortunately, the 2017 World Series will always have a stain on it from all angles, nothing is going to change that.  Nothing is also going to change how great that October was. So every morning I see my tattoo, and I think of the reason that I got it.  Not necessarily to commemorate a championship that was won by people I have never met before, but to always remind me of a month that I’ll never forget.  When it comes down to it, I am an Astros fan, and I am not ashamed to admit that I love that they won the 2017 World Series. “To thine own self be true…thou canst not then be false to any man.”