In 2017, Tony Adams, along with his wife and his daughter, were forced from their home by the floodwaters brought by Hurricane Harvey. He left with nothing but a trash bag filled with clothes, and he would not return for another 15 months. His entire neighborhood was devastated. That’s why when his beloved Astros won the World Series that fall, the lifelong Houstonian was watching from the home of a friend. As he relayed the memory on Wednesday afternoon, Adams stopped abruptly, taking a moment to compose himself. “When they won, we needed something, I needed something, we all needed something,” Adams said of the accomplishment, which he now knows has been tainted.



It’s part of the reason that he devoted upwards of 50 hours spread out over weeks to build the website signstealingscandal.com. A graphic designer and web developer by trade, Adams wrote an app to pull the Statcast data that he needed. Then he cataloged every instance of trash can banging...