Scandals are a serious matter

This is serious.
Sports scandals tend to be overblown.
Reporters covering the NFL have spent months talking and writing about whether a ball had slightly less air in it than is mandated under league rules. The NCAA freaks out if an athlete gets an unauthorized sandwich or a coach sends a text message at the wrong time. And fans are constantly yammering about how leagues “fix” results.
(I heard that last piece of nonsense from those insistent the NBA Finals would go seven games because “that’s what the league wants.” If that was the case, I’m guessing we’d have seen the NBA Finals reach game seven more than six times since I was born. But I digress.)
If FBI and Justice Department investigators have, in fact, found evidence that St. Louis Cardinals employees broke into a network of Houston Astros databases and stole proprietary information, that is a serious problem.
All sports involve a copycat element.
The West Coast Offense spread like wildfire after the San Francisco 49ers had so much success. The NBA runs through eras of teams led by big men to those that favor high-octane offense. And advanced statistics — getting beyond ERA and batting average — have taken over Major League Baseball.
Part of that spread occurs because players and coaches rarely stay with the same team for an entire career. But there’s a difference between making use of the knowledge stored in one’s brain and breaking into someone else’s information system and stealing it.
Consider how this could impact any sports league.
It could lead to a team knowing another’s draft strategy and being able to make moves to select players and/or block a rival from doing so. It could give one squad a tremendous advantage in the free agent market.
Perhaps most glaringly, it could give a team special insight at the trade deadline. And in no sport is the deadline more important than baseball, which constantly sees teams making last-minute attempts to improve for a playoff run or to unload players with big salaries in an effort to get prospects and draft picks to build for the future.
It’s not yet clear who was involved in the hacking. It could have been lowly interns or it could have reached as high as the general manager or owner.
Either way, Major League Baseball can’t allow such behavior. Its punishment can’t be just a slap on the wrist.
There will almost certainly be fines. And the Cardinals will likely lose some draft picks.
But I also think a playoff ban must be on the table.
Unless Major League Baseball sets a strong precedent, it leaves the door open for future problems in this age of technology.
These accusations are serious. MLB’s response must be serious as well.