The New York Yankees are returning to the World Series for the first time since their last championship run in 2009. Game 1 between the Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers is Friday at Dodger Stadium.
Just don’t tell Brian Cashman that the Yankees deserved to go 15 years between World Series appearances.
Cashman still has hard feelings about the cheating scandal that he feels aided the Houston Astros in the 2017 American League Championship Series, in which they eliminated the Yankees in seven games.
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In an interview with High Heat’s Christopher Russo on MLB Network on Wednesday, Cashman launched without prompt into a tangent about the 2017 Astros’ misdeeds.
“I hate the 15-year thing,” Cashman said, “because it completely forgets and discounts that some other organization cheated us when we were all the way in the end. If you knew what was going on, I don’t think they would be advancing during that time. I think we would have been advancing.
“I hate that 15-year thing because I don’t think it accurately reflects history.”
The Astros’ hitters used an illegal system to steal opponents’ signs in real time during 2017 and 2018 games, as revealed in a report by The Athletic and further detailed in a Major League Baseball investigation. Players and staff utilized a center-field camera to capture opposing catchers’ signs, relaying them to batters via a series of loud bangs on a trash can.
The scandal came to light in late 2019, leading to widespread backlash. MLB ultimately suspended general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch, both of whom were subsequently fired.
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The Yankees and Dodgers, who lost to the Astros in a seven-game World Series, were the most visible victims. But the cheating scandal turned the Astros into universal villains overnight, drawing boos wherever they played after the details of the scandal came to light.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has spoken openly about the Astros’ role in their own championship drought.
In 2017, Los Angeles was playing for its first title since 1988. The Dodgers fell short against the Boston Red Sox again in the 2018 World Series. They finally won a World Series in 2020, beating the Tampa Bay Rays, perhaps mitigating some of the sting of the Astros scandal.
If the Dodgers and Yankees can bond over anything this week, it’s the shared enemy who denied them a chance to meet in the World Series seven years ago.
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