By Michael Heilman

Yesterday, Major League Baseball suspended Astros GM Jeff Luhnow and Manager A.J Hinch for one year. The Astros were also fined $5 million and forfeited a first and second-round picks in the MLB Draft for 2020 and 2021 for their roles in the 2017 sign-stealing incident including using a camera in center field with a monitor to decode opposing signs and banging a trash can or another object to let the batter know what pitch was coming. Because of this, the Astros won the World Series in seven games over the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Some in Major League Baseball thought the punishment was light and should’ve been more severe. Shortly after both Luhnow and Hinch were suspended, Astros owner Jim Crane held a press conference to announce that both Luhnow and Hinch were fired. A couple of questions that baseball reporters and fans alike were wondering. Why didn’t MLB ban both Luhnow and Hinch? And, why didn’t the players that helped signaled the signs get suspended?

Major League Baseball has no problem suspending players, let alone banning them. Since MLB launched in 1903, there have been thirty-three bans from players, managers, executives, and owners. Some of the most famous bans include eight Chicago White Sox players in 1920 for conspiring with gamblers to throw away the 1919 World Series, Pete Rose in 1989 for gambling. Some people were banned but were reinstated such as Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, both were retired players, were banned in 1980 and 1983 respectfully after both men were hired by casinos in Atlantic City, NJ as greeters and autograph signers. They were later reinstated by then MLB Commissioner Pete Ueberroth in 1985. The last person who was banned was former Astros Assistant General Manager Brandon Taubman in 2019 for the treatment of female reporters in the Astros clubhouse.

Now the Astros are not the only team who will be punished. Former Astros bench coach and current manager of the Boston Red Sox, Alex Cora, is awaiting his fate for a similar case with using Apple watches to steal signs. Sadly, many teams will go the distance to cheat to win a championship. How can Major League Baseball put a stop to teams cheating now and in the future? They are going to have to take a page from college football.

In 1987, the NCAA issued a death penalty to the Southern Methodist University football program after the university was paying players and their families under the table to play at SMU. As a result, the team did not play in 1987, but the school itself didn’t allow the team to play in 1988 after they couldn’t play any home games that season. SMU struggled for the next twenty years with only one winning season and didn’t make it to a bowl until 2009. After 2009, the program has appeared in five bowl games, winning three of them and two C-USA conference titles. Since then, the NCAA has not issued any death penalties but banned college football programs from playing in bowl games for specific years along with forfeiting titles.

While MLB may never establish a death penalty, MLB should at least discuss this to stop teams from cheating. Suspending people for a year, fining a team, or forfeiting draft picks won’t stop a team from doing it again. They are only going to find another way to steal signs for a competitive advantage. Stealing signs have been going on for as long as baseball has been around. The question is, how many other teams are doing this too that we don’t know yet?

Giving a baseball team the death penalty would send a clear message to other organizations that cheating won’t be tolerated. This would be the most severe punishment baseball can hand down. Yes, the schedule would be out of place, fans of those teams won’t be able to watch them for a year, teams would get extra days off and so on.

In reality, MLB would not consider the death penalty, but they need to address this issue besides fines, suspensions, bans, forfeiting draft picks. They need to come up with a punishment that would be severe enough that teams will not cross the line again. If not, more organizations will continue to cheat, and a majority of fans will soon lose interest in baseball.