Brief and Obvious Notes about the Red Sox Apple Watch Cheating

Masterminds of Deception

> We are shocked, shocked, to discover a Boston sports franchise engaged in under handed acts, and behaved as if the rules did not apply to them.

> Is anyone else mortally tired of the inevitable whataboutism that guilty people go to? I don't care what the Red Sox think the YES Network is doing or how other people steal signs or that the magician's assistant is waving her arms in the air and doing a Sexy Pose. You MFers cheated. Everything else is you not owning up to that. Or, more accurately, still not owning up to that.

You see, when you do something bad, you should not profit from it. You should not get to excuse your behavior by pointing at other people. You should not degrade the world by trying to bring everything down to your own putrid level. Instead, you should make restitution for your actions, spend an inordinate amount of time trying to regain our confidence through good deeds and selfless acts, and endeavor to wash away the stain of your guilt through cleaning. You should also live with the stain for a good long time, because you were morally corrupt enough to get that stain in the first place. Some of the people that did the cheating should no longer be employed in a job that involves the public's trust, and yes, the public here includes gamblers. I realize that this entire paragraph makes me dangerously out of step with how to get ahead in any number of fields right now, but integrity isn't something you do for fun, or that you get out of a cereal box. It's only essential for the long-term survival of the sports and species.

And yes, all of that may sound like an overreaction, but you MFers cheated, and overreacting to people who cheat is something people with integrity get to do. Like white blood cells attacking an infection.

> There is one appropriate punishment for this, and it's very obvious: Boston should be declared ineligible for playoff participation. Leave their record as is, because we have no idea whether or not this amounted to a factor that decided games, and we also don't know how long they've been doing it. Just drop a thousand pound hammer on their feet, create a situation where every other franchise in MLB understands that the integrity of the game actually goddamn matters, and create a zero tolerance zone that is *sorely* needed in MLB, especially after the Steroid Years.

> I also don't know, or care, how far this goes up the ladder. The simple fact that any active player would go along with this is enough of an integrity fail to make the thousand pound hammer to the feet a given.

> The fact that this won't happen, and all that will happen is a seizure of draft picks and money, or pennies on the dollar for the actual cheating involved, is all that you need to know about the integrity of MLB. Who care more about how a major media market means for playoff ratings, and how they can gin this up to get more people watching the inevitable next Red Sox / Yankees game, especially if any of the pitchers throw inside, causing people to mill around on the infield for awhile.

> This is where Red Sox Fan will note that I don't root for his laundry, so my opinion doesn't matter, because Red Sox Fan cares more about the Red Sox than he or she does about baseball. Isn't it nice how the team's lack of integrity and whataboutism goes right from the teat to the spawn? Nature is magical in its way.