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Book Review of Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing

Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing
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There were rumors that the Dodgers were robbed of their 2017 World Series, that the Clayton Kershaw and Yu Darvish humiliations were results of being bushwhacked by electronic cheating. My Dodgers lost that series and I resisted looking for excuses to deny my team lost to a better opponent. In the football world, as a Patriots fan I constantly heard whining about New England only winning by playing dirty football and reacted with "yeah, yeah." With this in mind I was skeptical and hesitant to jump on the fantastical Astro-cheater bandwagon.  

Those S.O.B.'s did it! In Andy Martino's "Cheated" the entire case is fleshed out. We get the whole history of sign stealing from the 1890's until now. This scandal played out daily in the newspapers and radio talk shows but "Cheated" is not just a stretched-out magazine article, it breaks down how baseball got here and what has and has not been proven. It does not toss up one dimensional evil villains, it shows men who start off only trying to get a competitive edge, progress believing "everybody else is doing it,"  and finding themselves trying to defend themselves against a sports world booing them mercilessly. Whatever the initial intentions, games and championships were compromised and opponents suffered.

This is definitely a must-read for any baseball fan outside the Houston area. Cue James Earl Jones sermonizing on the innocence of baseball. Dissolve that picture and the screen is broken down into 1000 second per frame codebreaker technology... where, as Andy Martino says, the computer monitor tells us we can no longer trust what we are watching.

I thank Doubleday Books, NetGalley, and Andy Martino for an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review. #Cheated #NetGalley #Doubleday