The text popped up on my phone Monday afternoon from a longtime baseball executive, not long after Rob Manfred had lowered his sledgehammer on the Houston Astros.



“Give the hardware back,” the exec said, emphatically, of a team he angrily believed “went over the line.”



By “hardware,” I’m guessing, he wasn’t referring to the Astros’ state-of-the-art lug wrench set. He was referring to their prized World Series trophy of 2017. Of course he was.



Maybe Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch will never be spotted again in Minute Maid Park. But that trophy? It isn’t going anywhere. And that wasn’t sitting well with many people in this sport.



So if baseball really wanted to put “some teeth” into its discipline, this exec said in another text, it should take back that trophy. It should strip the Astros of that title. It should rewrite history to make the most powerful statement it could make...