It might seem a bit like a crooked politician breaking into the office of a rival who is at 2 percent in the polls, or a master spy choosing to snoop around the Embassy of Tonga.

Federal investigators suspect that front-office personnel of the St. Louis Cardinals hacked into the computer systems of a rival major league baseball team.

If the account is true, the team they chose was the Houston Astros, one of the worst in baseball for years.

What would be the motivation for a phenomenally successful team like the Cardinals poking around the databases of a perennial loser?