Dodgers cheated out of two World Series titles? Los Angeles city leaders call for a fix

The Dodgers may have been unfairly toppled by cheaters during the 2017 and 2018 World Series showdowns. But does that make them champions?

They are in the eyes of some members of the Los Angeles City Council, who approved a resolution calling for the Dodgers to be awarded Major League Baseball’s championship trophies for those two years, when the team fell to the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox.

The Astros — who went on to lose in the 2019 World Series, to the delight of many Dodgers fans — are embroiled in a sign-stealing scandal. The Red Sox are under investigation amid similar allegations.

The Astros terminated Manager A.J. Hinch and General Manager Jeff Luhnow after the MLB suspended them for a year for their roles in the plot. Next, the Red Sox canned Manager Alex Cora, who’d been identified as a key participant in the sign-stealing scheme while with the Astros organization. And, finally, Manager Carlos Beltrán, a former Astros player cited in the sign-stealing probe, was fired by the New York Mets.

So will MLB officials actually listen to the appeal of these LA officials — and rewrite baseball history? Likely not, say baseball observers.

Even the Dodgers — and other teams potentially disadvantaged by the Astros’ technologically sophisticated sign-stealing strategy — have so far stayed quiet on the matter.

But City Council members Tuesday, particularly fervent Dodgers fans Paul Koretz and Gil Cedillo, appeared not to care.

The body voted unanimously to approve the council members’ resolution, calling for additional penalties, including awarding the 2017 and 2018 World Series trophies to the Dodgers.

No, the City Council members do not expect that to actually happen. But Koretz and Cedillo said they were trying to speak up for Dodger Nation — Southern California’s millions of true-Blue fans. In their minds, they said, this cheating scandal needs to go down in history, if not rewrite it.

“It’s been 100 years since a scandal of this proportion has rocked baseball,” Koretz told reporters just before the council voted to approve their resolution, which was seconded by Council Paul Krekorian.

“As a lifelong baseball fan, I feel that the national pastime itself is mortally wounded,” said Koretz, who described himself as a fan of the Dodgers since he was three. He branded the plot: “Arguably worse than that ‘Black Sox’ scandal (when the Chicago White Sox were accused of taking bribes to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series).

“Is nothing sacred?” the pair seemed to be asking. As politicians, the pair should know that things can sometimes get dirty — and that cheating happens all of the time in sports, especially when the stakes are higher than in the community and high school teams they played on.

But, like many others, Koretz pointed to the way that the purportedly common practice of spying on signals sent to pitchers, usually done in rudimentary and old-fashioned ways, has advanced in sophistication.

“I hate to be naive,” he said. “But the fact that we actually saw high-tech sign-stealing was a shock to me. I know the sport of baseball isn’t perfect. I can’t say nobody ever tries to get an edge when they shouldn’t. That this was going on was a complete surprise.”

Koretz also took the innovative sign-stealing as part of a heightening of corner-cutting in our society, calling out:

• The recent undergraduate admissions scandal in which rich parents partnered with coaches to snag spots for their children at prestigious colleges;
• The enduring illicit use of performance enhancing drugs in a variety of sports including baseball;
• And the impetus of the impeachment proceedings facing President Donald Trump, who his accusers allege tried to gain an advantage for himself by persuading foreign leaders to investigate political foe Joe Biden.

Cedillo agreed: “This is about much more than baseball.”

Are LA’s hometown leaders the appropriate messengers for this moral lesson?

Though many Dodgers fans would gladly welcome those two new trophies, some responded to the resolution with exasperation that taxpayer-paid time was being spent on a symbolic effort, burning council moments better spent on such issues as the homeless crisis.

I guess they solved the homelessness crisis… https://t.co/aKlhtXhM4B

— James Rojas (@JamesRojasWBZ) January 21, 2020

Still, Cedillo spoke mostly in the language of a fan, irate over the scandal after experiencing compounded layers of crushing disappointment in recent years — seeing their team get so very close, only to lose the World Series titles.

The Dodgers not only lost — they were robbed, Cedillo seemed to be saying, with all the passion of a lifelong Los Angeles sports fan.

“The Houston Astros were not the champions nor the best team that year,” Cedillo said in his remarks to his City Council colleagues. “The fact of the matter is, but for the cheating of the Astros, the Dodgers would have wrapped up the series, and they would have been the champions of that year.”

But perhaps those are just the thoughts of Cedillo and Koretz, the two self-professed biggest Dodgers fans on the council.

Bob Blumenfield, who said he voted for his colleagues’s motion because “I don’t want to be against our home team,” appeared to represent another sector of the Dodgers’ fanbase.

Blumenfield said he thinks “the motion goes a little too far, saying we have to award the series to the Dodgers.”

“I don’t think that’s how we want to win our championship,” he said. “We’re going to win it for real in 2020. We don’t need this consolation.”