It will be impossible for the 2017 Astros to live down the cheating scandal for the rest of their careers. Likewise, it will be impossible for Manfred to remove this gaffe from his baseball obituary, whenever that gets written by one of his MLB.com employees. The phrase “piece of metal” will be a part of baseball’s lexicon forever, as “Say it ain’t so, Joe” and “It ain’t over till it’s over.”