HANK AARON GOES FOR THE ASTROS THROAT!

The Godfather of Baseball, Hank Aaron has spoken. Time for MLB and the Player's union to react swiftly.  You want to know why? Because when a guy like Hank Aaron speaks about the integrity of the game... you do what he says.

This is a guy that played the game clean his entire career... even through racial hatred, even in the dark, dark days of living in Babe Ruth's shadow. And you know what? He did it with talent and pride... and not stealing signs using technology and faking it. Hank Aaron has honor. Rob Manfred and Tony Clark better sit at a table this weekend and fix this mess once and for all.

The Washington Post writes:

"A report released last month by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred detailed the Astros’ scheme, which continued into the 2018 season and involved using a center field camera to detect opposing catchers’ signs and tip off Houston batters to upcoming pitches. 

For everyone specifically named in the report, the fallout was severe: then-Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and then-manager A.J. Hinch were each suspended for a year and then quickly fired; Red Sox manager Alex Cora, a Houston bench coach in 2017, lost his job in Boston; and the same fate eventually befell Mets manager Carlos Beltran, who spent his final season as a player with the 2017 Astros. 

However, no other players on that team were named, and Manfred said in his report that he was not inclined to hand down punishments to anyone else. 

Asked on NBC’s “Today” show if “the punishment fit the crime,” the 86-year-old Aaron replied. “No, I don’t. “I think whoever did that,” Aaron continued, “should be out of baseball for the rest of their lives.”...

When Aaron told NBC Thursday that he was “surprised” to learn the details of the Astros’ operation, he was asked, “They didn’t steal signs back in your day?” 

“They did. They didn’t steal them that way,” Aaron replied with a chuckle.

And that's the point. Playing baseball clean, seeing the way a pitcher tips pitches and then reporting back to your teammates to "look for this" or "look for that"... that's just baseball. That's trying to get the edge in the realm of the game itself.

When you start taking out baseball bats and banging trash cans because you have a live feed in the clubhouse and you move a camera in center field like Reid Ryan of the Astros did... that's cheating and there needs to be harsh, HARSH punishments for that. The Astros are liars and cheaters and are to never be trusted again. Bottom line.

Aaron's right. I hope Manfred and Clark are listening.