A brief guide to trolling the sign-stealing Houston Astros

Baseball’s 2020 season is about to be the most fun that the game has been in a while — just not in the way that MLB would like.

The Houston Astros cheating scandal has been the talk of the offseason, and the way many players are discussing it in spring training, this is going to spill well over into the regular season. In fact, new Astros manager Dusty Baker has tried to get out in front of retaliation that he knows his team is going to face.

Here’s the latest We Want Blood statement, from Nick Markakis:

Players, teams, and their marketing teams are going to be finding ways to poke at the Astros all season. Fans are going to want to get in on this too. Part of the fun in sports is trolling the opposition. And because I am much less into the Life And Death Seriousness that some sports fans take, I’m happy to help produce IRL memes.

So let’s get crackin’.

We’re already getting warmed up:

Banging trash cans is how the Astros communicated in their sign-stealing. That’s going to happen everywhere, unless Rob Manfred also decides that would be too much. But then again, that would be making the assumption he would actually do something.

Astr*s! Houston Asteriks! Whatever!

Carlos Correa claimed that the reason Jose Altuve didn’t want his jersey ripped off after his walk-off home run against the Yankees in 2019 was because he had a “terrible” tattoo, and not because he was wearing a buzzer to let him know what pitch was coming. Altuve switched shirts almost immediately after the dinger, and came out to do his postgame interview with Ken Rosenthal.

How bad can this possibly be?

Anyway, hand ‘em out. Lean into the memes.

Some of you are going to read this and think it’s an Actually Good Idea. It’s not.

The Astros won the World Series, and they cheated doing it. But it’s still a thing that happened. If you were to ask anyone on the Dodgers if that’s how they want to win that World Series — by having it vacated and calling it their own — they would tell you no thanks. All anybody is going to remember for the rest of time is the Astros won, they cheated to do it in a non-slick fashion, and we got tons of memes, trash talk, and soon to be retaliation out of it. So actually giving the Dodgers the title would be meaningless to everyone involved.

However, to piss off the Astros — because they have been absolute jerks about the whole thing — just really lean into claiming the title. UCF that shit (except stop before we don’t like you, either). This scandal is a candle that’s got a lot of wick left. Let that baby burn slowly.

I’m just imagining: a Louisville Slugger (if that’s not the bat he uses, don’t bother correcting me, I don’t care) being knocked against cleats, removing dirt.

“Now batting, No. 27, Jose Altuve ...”