SPORTS ILLUSTRATED6
to release only a sliver of the evidence
and offer Houston’s players blanket
immunity in exchange for their testi-
mony nurtures suspicion and damns
the cheaters, who, unpunished, are
unable to pay their debt to baseball.
The second, and, again, Q.E.D.:
Give the people who play and coach
and think about this game the space
to do what they do best and they can
lift baseball from the mire of scandal
to exciting new heights.THIS YEAR’S MLB
preview happens to find us in that
optimistic spirit, fixated on every
reason that baseball, beset by gripes
about pace of play and juiced balls and
sagging ratings even before the bang-
ing scheme, will thrive in the 2020s.
Indulge, for a moment, a rosy ren-
dering of where we stand today. The
1920s opened with one Ruth; we
now have two in Nationals outfielder
Juan Soto (aka Childish Bambino),
who smacked 56 homers before his
21st birthday (and added three dur-
ing the World Series in which hewas a grand jury in Cook County, Ill.,
which had been convened to inves-
tigate game-fixing in baseball and
then spent the final stretch of the 1920
pennant race hauling various stars
before it. Billy Maharg, a gambler
and onetime replacement player for
the Tigers and Phillies, served as the
scandal’s Mike Fiers, telling all to the
Philadelphia North American, and days
later Sox righty Eddie Cicotte spilled
to the grand jury. Though none of
Chicago’s so-called Eight Men Out was
ever convicted of a crime, new com-
missioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis
banned them all for life in August ’21.
There are at least two salient les-
sons here, one for Rob Manfred and
another for anyone with a stake in
baseball’s well-being.
The first—obvious, one would
think, though it has eluded the com-
missioner—goes to the merits of deci-
sive action against cheaters. Manfred
slapped the Astros with a $5 million
f ine, stripped them of four draft picks
and suspended G.M. Jeff Luhnow and
manager A.J. Hinch. But his choicecame of drinking age), and the Angels’
Shohei Ohtani, 25 (page 16), a two-
way player par excellence and freak of
nature who, unlike the Babe, refuses
to abandon the mound.
Those ’20s saw baseball f lourish
in New York; our ’20s are likely to
begin with the Yankees rattling off
some more 100-win seasons, while the
Mets return a home run king in f irst
baseman Pete Alonso and the winner
of consecutive NL Cy Youngs, right-
hander Jacob deGrom. Los Angeles
and Chicago, too, offer potential
steamrollers in both circuits powered
by young talent.
In response to the alabaster game
of the 1920s, this decade offers a
game more diverse than ever. Last
year marked the debuts of 15 Venezu-
elans, seven Cubans, three Colombi-
ans, two Québécois, two Taiwanese,
MLB’s second Honduran and second
South African, and its first Peruvian-
born player (A’s lefty Jesús Luzardo).
It is not just the field where fans will
spot unexpected faces: In the big
leagues, the Giants will employ as-
sistant coach Alyssa Nakken (page 36),
while the Cardinals have Patrick
Elkins as a “run production coach”
(page 40) and the Astros, as a savvy
bit of penance, have hired 70-year-old
manager Dusty Baker, who had fig-
ured he would never get another job
(page 29). And chances are, if you see
Nationals closer Sean Doolittle out-
side of the visitors’ bullpen, you’re at
an independent bookstore (page 26).
We limited ourselves to 20 reasons
to welcome the ’20s (round numbers!).
But any fan possessed of springtime
good cheer could generate dozens
more. This is the treat of watching
and chronicling this game in an age
when those who play it are the most
talented ever, capable of wowing us
a full century after Ruth first threw
on pinstripes and obliterated his own
home run record. Soon enough, the
echoes of a bat striking a trash can
will dissipate, and someone will yell,
Play ball, and a decade of new storiesand surprises will be upon us. (^) ¼
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