The Houston Astros players have remained fairly quiet since getting busted in the sign-stealing scandal — until now, that is.
Spring training saw reporters flocking to their clubhouse, only to hear scripted answers from players to all questions — essentially regurgitating what they had been coached to say by the public relations officails.
But crises can make people do strange things, and the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic apparently drove Evan Gattis to come out and apologize in a long statement.
Gattis appeared on The Athletic’s “755 is real” podcast, and he spoke about how the team “cheated” both baseball and fans.
“I don’t know how to feel yet,” Gattis began, as transcribed by For The Win. “We didn’t look at our moral compass and say, ‘Yeah, this is right.’ It was almost like paranoia warfare or something. What we did was wrong. Don’t get it twisted. It was wrong for the nature of competition — not even just baseball. Yeah, that was wrong. I will say that. … We cheated baseball. We cheated fans. Fans felt duped. I feel bad for fans because I really wish everyone was there. I wish everyone could experience what it’s like to break spring training and break for the big-league club and be in a big-league clubhouse, part of a big-league team. I wish everyone knew what that was like.
“But I’m not asking for sympathy or anything like that. Part of the punishment is being hated by everybody forever. I don’t know what should have been done but something should have (expletive) been done. I do agree with that big time. And I do think it’s good for baseball that they clean it up. I’ve thought about it a (expletive) (expletive)-ton, and I still don’t know how I feel … I understand that it’s not (expletive) good enough to say sorry. I get it.”
That’s a great first step. Hopefully some of Gattis’ teammates will follow suit.
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