It’s hard not to look at sports sometimes and see an ever-growing pile of absurdity just waiting for some gasoline and a match.
At which point we all stand back and watch. It’s like Burning Man for people who like to keep score.
Just this year we’ve had DeflateGate and the FIFA corruption scandal, which have vastly different levels of actual significance but occupy roughly the same spot in the public imagination: cheaters prosper, especially in sports.
And now we have New York Times report that the FBI is investigating the St. Louis Cardinals for hacking into the computer systems of the Houston Astros.
Now, had it been the Yankees, no one would blink. We’d just ask how much they paid the guy who did it.
But this is the Cardinals, who specialize in making the playoffs – five times in the last six years and boasting a MLB-leading 43-21 record this season – and coming off as morally superior in doing so. The Cardinal Way is about solid Midwest values, simple uniforms, selflessly advancing the runner and hacking rival computer networks.
Now, this is baseball, so we’re not talking high level corporate espionage carried out by a legion of bots unleashed from a Russian server farm.
No, it appears that Jeff Luhnow – the Astros general manager who was an executive with the Cardinals from 2003-11 – had a short list of preferred passwords he used when he worked in St. Louis. And so when he went to Houston and built a database for the organization’s intellectual and analytical capital called Ground Control – modelled after a similar system he put together in St. Louis named Redbird – and his old colleagues in St. Louis wanted to snoop around to see what he was up to, they just used his old passwords and gained access.
The breach first came to light a year ago when months of Astros trade discussions were leaked and published on Deadspin.com.
There was nothing particularly incriminating about what materialized. There was chatter about the Miami Marlins listening to trade possibilities centring on slugger Giancarlo Stanton. Former Astros starter Bud Norris was being shopped around aggressively in the summer of 2013.
For a local angle, the Blue Jays and GM Alex Anthopoulos figured fairly prominently in the documents that surfaced and came off looking pretty shrewd, which can only help given his status in Toronto seems to ebb and flow with every winning or losing streak. He rejected overtures for prospects Aaron Sanchez and Marcus Stroman, as well as MLBers Brett Lawrie and Anthony Gose.
Given that Sanchez and Stroman have materialized as the potential cornerstones of the Jays rotation for years to come and Lawrie and Gose were the lynchpins in trades that procured a leading MVP candidate in Josh Donaldson and a potential rookie of the year in Devon Travis, Anthopoulos should print out a copy of the transcripts, highlight the good parts and leave them under the doors of all the bigwigs at Rogers. He should visit the hackers in jail.
But back to St. Louis. If Luhnow comes off looking a bit unsophisticated for using the same list of passwords everywhere he went – just like you and me, in other words – the cyber-warriors in St. Louis hardly come across as guys who can get a job in Internet security after this baseball thing backs up on them.
According to the FBI, the offending individuals accessed the Astros’ database from their home address. Tracking the hack back to where it started they discovered the Astros’ network had been breached from a computer at a home that some Cardinals officials had lived in. Unless the club can prove it was someone’s hack-happy teenager playing the fool, it seems like the noose will close on the Cardinals front office pretty quickly.
It is less harmless than your average white-collar crime. No one has had their retirement savings compromised or otherwise swindled. It’s not as damaging to the game than say, decades of unchecked performance-enhancing drug use. There is nothing to indicate that corporate espionage – outside of say, sign stealing – is the new big thing in baseball.
All indications are the Cardinals’ breach is the act of a rogue employee or group of employees.
But it’s a bigger deal than SpyGate or DeflateGate, the ethical controversies that have tarnished the legacy of the New England Patriots.
Hacking into someone else’s private data isn’t against the rules, it’s against the law and it sounds like the FBI may even be relishing the chance to make some high profile prosecutions.
"The FBI aggressively investigates all potential threats to public and private sector systems," an FBI spokeswoman told the Times. "Once our investigations are complete, we pursue all appropriate avenues to hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace."
The victims are clear: The Astros, for one. And Cardinals fans who will now have to defend the achievements of their team against a simple catch-all insult from now until the end of time – "cheaters!"
Also damaged further, if possible, the idea that professional sports are a place where a firm moral compass is necessary to guide you towards the spoils of victory. As the Cardinals Way and the Patriots Path would indicate, it’s kind of the opposite, actually.
But you knew that.