Trash cans, sour grapes and sign stealing

A lesser man would begin this column with a weak play on words like: “Houston, we have a problem.”

But I’m better than that.

However, Major League Baseball does have a problem with sign stealing, as evidenced by the firings this week of Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch, Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, and New York Mets manager Carlos Beltran.

For those keeping score at home, that leaves 10 percent of MLB clubs looking for a new manager in mid-January.

The punishments stem from an MLB investigation that determined the Astros illegally transmitted video from a camera in center field to a dugout monitor to decipher hand signals of opposing teams.

Astros players and staff are accused of banging on trash cans with baseball bats from the dugout to signal to a hitter at the plate that a breaking ball was coming — and even though that clearly constitutes cheating, it’s also admittedly a hilarious mental image.

Houston used the illegal techniques in its home games at Minute Maid Park during the 2017 season and the early part of 2018.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred originally doled out one-year suspensions for Hinch and Luhnow on Monday, but by day’s end Astros owner Jim Crane decided to fire the duo rather than play out the 2020 season with an interim skipper and GM.

BOSTON FIRED Cora on Tuesday evening before the commissioner’s office could hand out a penalty, but he will likely face a hefty suspension nonetheless. Cora was the bench coach for Houston in 2017, and the findings from the investigation suggest that he was a ringleader in the scheme.

On Thursday, Beltran became the latest domino to fall, losing his first managerial position before Spring Training could even begin. Beltran played for the Astros in 2017 and also is alleged to have played a central role in the scandal.

Complicating this whole matter are the tiny little details that Houston won the World Series in 2017, and Boston won the title in 2018 in Cora’s first season in charge of the Red Sox.

Fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who lost in the World Series in 2017 and 2018, have understandably argued that their team was cheated out of back-to-back championships, though no one in the Dodgers organization has gone that far publicly.

However, recently retired pitcher C.C. Sabathia, who played most of his career with the New York Yankees, was more than happy to make the case that his 2017 and 2018 Yankees were wronged.

NEW YORK was eliminated by Houston in the 2017 ALCS before Boston knocked out the Yanks in the 2018 ALDS.

“As everything’s been coming out, and the more facts that we get, it’s getting frustrating,” Sabathia said. “To sit here and know that late in my career I could’ve had a title, maybe (in 2017) or maybe ‘18, but we got cheated out (by) a team kind of doing something that’s not within the rules of the game.”

Sabathia certainly has a point.

New York and Los Angeles were on the business end of unfair tactics by their opponents, and it cost both teams a fair shot at winning a championship — or two.

That being said, I wholeheartedly disagree with Sabathia’s assessment that the two teams, and specifically the 2017 Astros, should have to vacate their World Series titles.

There’s no debating that Houston (and probably Boston) cheated the system to gain an advantage.

Hinch, Cora, Beltran, and Luhnow all deserved to lose their jobs.

But the players still had to win those games, including some on the road where they did not have a monitor in the dugout.

The pitchers still had to get 27 outs, and even if the hitters were being tipped off to the breaking ball by the sound of a Louisville Slugger banging against a garbage can, those guys still had to hit the pitch when it was delivered.

MORE THAN anything, though, I’m opposed to vacating championships retroactively because it doesn’t take away our memory of Houston — and Boston — lifting the big trophy with all the flags on top.

So unless MLB has developed a mind eraser akin to the neuralyzer from “Men in Black,” millions of people will remember the Astros and Red Sox winning it all.

Yes, that leaves a sour taste in our mouths, especially for Dodgers and Yankees fans.

But sometimes life gives you lemons and no sugar, so you can’t even make a nice glass of lemonade.

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Matthew Gwin is a former Press intern who lives in the Kansas City area. He’s pinch-hitting for Steve Cameron, who is getting some medical needs tended to that don’t involve baseball bats and trash cans.

Or do they...?