Major League Baseball has been in the news a lot lately, and it hasn’t been for a good reason. Normally, MLB wouldn’t get this much press in January, not even with big free-agent signings, but for a cheating scandal, that’s another subject.

The Houston Astros have been accused of using video equipment to steal signs during the 2017 season. It has been alleged that someone would signal their batters by the use of a buzzer device the batters wore on their body. The video part has been confirmed through an investigation by MLB, however, the buzzer idea has not yet been substantiated.

As a result, MLB suspended the Astros manager, A.J. Hinch, and the team’s general manager, Jeff Luhnow, for one year, and then they were fired by the team. The Astros were also fined $5 million and stripped of four draft picks.

The Boston Red Sox have parted ways with their manager, Alex Cora, who was a coach with Houston at the time of the alleged cheating, and the Mets have fired their newly hired manager Carlos Beltran for his role in the Astros sign stealing scandal while he was a player with the team. Beltran may be the first manager in MLB history to have been fired before ever managing a game.

Some have said cheating has been in the game of baseball since it began, and that may be true. Over the years we’ve heard of players corking their bats, pitchers using spit or pine tar on the ball, runners on second base tipping off the batter to what the catcher signals for the next pitch, steroids and performance enhancing drugs had their heyday in the sport, but nothing compares to using video equipment and electronic technology to gain an advantage.

Several former players are even upset with the way the Astros cheating became public. Former Houston pitcher Mike Fiers, now with Oakland, mentioned it in an interview with a couple reporters from the sports publication The Athletic. The former players contend he broke the code of clubhouse secrecy. They feel he should have shared the information with his teammates to better prepare him to face the Astros, or even speak directly with the MLB commissioner’s office, but not squeal to the media.

Even Pete Rose believes his betting on MLB games pales in comparison to what the Astros have done.

“I bet on my own team to win,” Rose told Randy Miller of NJ.com. “That’s what I did in a nutshell. I was wrong, but I didn’t taint the game. I didn’t try to steal any games. I never voted against my team. I bet on my team every night because that’s the confidence that I had in my players, and I was wrong. But this is a little different. It’s a lot different, actually, and I think that’s why the commissioner came down so hard.”

So, here’s my take on all this. Did the Astros cheat? Yes. Did they gain an unfair advantage? In some games, probably. Should they be stripped of their 2017 World Series title? No.

If the Astros have been doing this all along since 2017, and possibly before that, they also had to win a lot of games on the road, away from their cheating system, in order to make the playoffs and actually advance to the World Series again this past season. Plus, if they were so good at stealing signs, how come the pitching staff of the Washington Nationals was still able to shut down Houston to win their first World Series Championship?

I agree with the Astros being punished, but I don’t think they should be stripped of their 2017 World Series title, for reasons stated above, plus, the Astros still had to pitch to the New York Yankees stellar lineup.

One of the saddest points in this whole scandal may be the fact that the Houston Astros have been so good, they didn’t really need to cheat in order to beat their opponents. So why did they do it? Did they not think that at some point the truth would come out? And now, it has put another black eye on a sport that has frankly run out of eyes. The actions of the Astros organization has cost four men their jobs, and maybe their careers, and may cause potentially more fallout in the weeks to come. Stay tuned.