Astros Hitters Should Be Banned from Baseball For Life Like 1919 Black Sox

Ben Maller: “The Astros franchise is an embarrassment to the city of Houston and a national disgrace for Major League Baseball. They need to put their World Series trophy into quarantine. Not suspending multiple Astros players is a massive oversight and misstep by baseball. Those mongrels who took part in this illicit activity should NOT get a pardon. Everyone who has played for the Astros in recent years is tainted and they’re all dirty… AJ Hinch and Jeff Luhnow were the fall guys and more heads should have rolled. Rob Manfred should go full Kenesaw Mountain Landis and use ‘eight men out’ as a boilerplate. Using the Black Sox template, I think we should ban 8 players from the 2017 Astros: George Springer, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, Yuli Gurriel, Jose Altuve, Marwin Gonzalez, Brian McCann, and Justin Verlander.” (Full Audio Above)

Listen to Ben Maller explain why he thinks Major League Baseball went laughably light on their punishment of the embattled Houston Astros for their role in systematic cheating that cast a dark shadow on their 2017 World Series title.

The Astros were implicated in a complex sign-stealing scheme that crossed the line from on-field pastime to egregious mischief when it was discovered the team was using illegal technology to record signals and then relay them to hitters in the batter’s box in real time.

Maller wasn’t content with the season-long suspensions to Astros manager AJ Hinch and GM Jeff Ludhow, which would later lead to their firings altogether, and said they were simply the ‘fall guys’ to a scandal that was already alleged to have been heavily ‘player driven’.

Check out the audio above as Maller explains why he thinks the entire Astros batting order should receive the same punishment as the infamous 1919 ‘Black Sox’, who had their entire lineup banned from baseball for life when it discovered they threw the 1919 World Series in exchange for money.