The Houston Astros.

The team downplayed it. The commissioner spoke on it. The other players weighed in, some enraged at the cheaters, some enraged at the snitchers. Clearly baseball needs another bulky white man’s opinion, but I’ve had difficulty decided exactly how I feel about it.

I went with “smug” first, typing out a bratty lil piece about wishing the Twins would cheat to get past the Yankees in the post season. Even typed out a draft on my phone:

Maybe we get found out. Maybe it takes a year and then someone snitches. We would still have one year where we were alive and we believed the Twins could beat the Yankees. Just think about THAT for a little bit.

Too soon, maybe. Also, it turns out I do like cheering for the nice guy MLB team. I added some sugar-sweet “Love You, Twins” words into the draft and it still didn’t work.

Apparently I care more about the Twins good sportsmanship than beating the Yankees, or I would have published the quoted article a week ago. The Twins are still Luke Skywalkers in a Han Solo world - at least to me.

Blegh. Am I right?

So it hits me, after I plot a third draft, that I don’t hate the Astros. I don’t particularly feel any sort of way ABOUT the Astros. Shouldn’t they also have to apologize to me for making me care about a pretty good baseball team who cheated their way up to being champions?

The Astros’ World Series victory is like that time Star Wars sold a display box because they didn’t have the action figures ready yet.

It is the way you shrug after you realize the hot-bodied human at the bar gave you a fake phone number.

It is the ten-minute joke your kid forces you to listen to before revealing there is no punchline.

It is when the Team of Destiny is revealed to be just another good baseball team. With spying and thumping.

If you can’t apologize right, apologize WRONG. Villains are more interesting than whatever sad sack shoe-gazing **** show they’re boring us with now.