>> the astros have done it again in 2023! >> narrator: as they clinch their 7th playoff berth in a row... >> the kings of the american league west remain the houston astros! >> narrator: correspondent ben reiter examines the meteoric rise of the houston astros. >> we use the term the edge, right?

but there's a next level to that... >> it's called the bleeding edge. >> if you want to excel in the world of sports, you have to take risks. >> narrator: exclusive inside accounts... >> these guys are willing to do whatever it takes... >> narrator: the historic cheating scandal... >> the astros used a camera system to steal signs... >> the players certainly were aware of it! they were in on it! >> the scandal is five percent of the story. >> narrator: and the lasting impact on the game. >> it became a brutally efficient business. and the astros did better than anybody else. >> that's the deal that they made they get to have their title questioned forever. >> narrator: now on frontline >> i'd have thrown them all out. >> lifetime ban? >> lifetime ban. >> narrator: "thastros edge." >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting.

additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence in journalism... park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more at macfound.org and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. and additional support from laura debonis. and the charina endowmennt fund. (crowd cheers, whistles) >> ben reiter: it was the bottom of the fourth inning when mike bolsinger came to the mound for the badly trailing toronto blue jays.

he had one job to do. >> just get one out; i mean, in theory it should be easy. >> there's another one deep to right. bautista's back, this one's gonna go... (loud bang) a three-run homerun. >> they just kept getting hits. >> carlos beltran jumps on the first pitch. >> reiter: bolsinger recounted the game on my podcast. >> i'm trying to remember a time i was rocked more than that, and i just don't remember a time. >> it truly was the most embarrassing moment in my career, 100 percent. i've never been more embarrassed of myself, ever. >> reiter: bolsinger was precariously holding on to his place on the team. but he was far from the only pitcher the houston astros had beaten up in 2017. >> bases are loaded. (bat cracks, crowd roars)

>> i remember in the interview after the game, i told the reporter, i was like, man, it's just like, it was like they knew what i was throwing, like they were all over my stuff. there was nothing i could do. >> reiter: that night was mike bolsinger's very last in the major leagues. the blue jays cut him after the game. as for the team that ended his career? a few months later, they would win the world series and go on to become baseball's most dominant club of this era. >> the houston astros! world champions! >> reiter: but there was more to the houston astros' success. something that almost no one outside the team would know about until two years later. it sounded like this: (two low-pitched thumps in distance) (bat cracks) not the crack of the bat, but the banging sound right before it. (two low-pitched thumps) a sound that let astros batters know what pitches were coming,

like many of the ones that night in august 2017 from mike bolsinger. it wou spark one of the most explosive scandals in baseball history. >> the article in "the athletic" that has everybody talking... >> a stunning charge about the houston astros' world series win two years ago... >> accuses the astros of illegally stealing signs... >> somebody in the dugout hits a garbage can once or twice... (low-pitched thump, bat cracks) >> this ball is crushed to left field. ringer has just hit his 31st home run. >> reiter: it's a scandal still reverberating through major league baseball today. >> (chanting): cheater, cheater! >> you put so much work into getting to this spot in your career, and then you kind of find out, hey, this was taken away by people that cheated. (bat crack echoes) ♪ >> from the houston astros.

(crowd booing) >> reiter: this is how astros players were greeted at the 2023 all-star game, more than three years after the cheating scandal broke. even though these guys hadn't even been members of the team in 2017. (crowd booing) >> jose altuve has probably heard the boos about as much as any player on this roster. >> reiter: players who were on that 2017 team have received similar welcomes from rival fans. long before the astros had become such lightning rods, synonymous with cheating... ...i had reported on the team for "sports illustrated." (fans whooping) writing about their influential and hyper-competitive approach to baseball: driven by data, and drawn from wall street and silicon valley. as the teams racked up four world series appearances ln six years-- i've been trying to figure out what i and most everyone else had missed about the astro's rise.

how their ruthless drive for an edge led not only to such success, but also such scandal. ♪ my search for answers led me far away from america's pastime. to a soccer club in spain, owned by an american businessman named jeff luhnow, the person credited-- and blamed-- for constructing the modern astros. >> i take my responsibility. but i, i... there are aspects of this that i haven't explained until now. and i think it's important. i have nothing to hide. i never have. >> reiter: luhnow used to be the general manager of the astros, and bore the brunt of the scandal. though he denied knowing about the cheating, he was fired and run out of the league. we spoke for four hours, the most expansive interview he's given on camera. how could you not know that your team was cheating like this?

>> the umpire who was standing at home plate didn't know. like, it's not out of the realm of possibility. in fact, it's more rational to think that i didn't know than i did know. because i didn't start it, i didn't create it, i didn't approve it, i didn't budget for it, i didn't, i didn't do anything. i didn't lift a finger to make this happen. >> reiter: major league baseball, in its investigation of the scandal, didn't find any evidence luhnow knew about the banging scheme. but they said that as the gm, he should have known. and pointed to a "very problematic" win-at-all-costs culture he created. how do you respond to the public perception of, like, a larger cultural problem within the astros? >> i think it's wanting to create a narrative that is easy to explain. there was no toxic culture at the astros. we had a very productive culture that led to a lot of success in the game of baseball.

six american league championships in a row, four world series, two rings for winning the world series. that's a dynasty. i don't think that's gonna be replicated anytime soon. >> reiter: but their legacy's more than that, because there's other parts of the story. >> there's always other parts, you know? tom brady and the deflategate, and there's always, yeah, there's always something, right? i'm not trying to minimize it. it's there and we all face the music, but the astros are one of the best sports teams of the 21st century, period. ♪ >> reiter: luhnow was an unusual choice to lead the astros from the start. although he'd spent the previous eight years in the front office of the st. louis cardinals, he was a creature of corporate america, with a resume that included a stint at mckinsey, the powerful and controversial management consulting firm that advises governments and corporations how to run efficiently and profitably.

>> it was a big risk to hire somebody of my profile. i didn't play the game professionally. i have an engineering degree. i have an mba. that's not the profile that people typically look for to run the sports se of a sports organization. i was hired to help innovate and to help push the boundaries and to help figure out what's next, to look at the sort of long-term health of the organization. >> reiter: he was hired in 2011 by the team's new owner, a self-made shipping tycoon named jim crane. >> and finally our crazy money story of the d comes from houston. the astros were sold to businessman jim crane for $680 million. why is it crazy? well, the houston astros are in last place. >> we'll sit down with all the executives, ask them what they think we're doing right, and ask them what we think we're doing wrong and we'll make some very, very quick adjustments. >> he was buying a tea that wasn't going anywhere.

he bought a bloated roster with old stars. >> reiter: jesus ortiz was on the astros beat for the "houston chronicle" at the time. it wasn't very popular either. >> no, no, like, it was an unpopular team. it was a team that's mediocre. it was a mediocre team with a very dissatisfied fan base. ♪ >> reiter: dissatisfied because despite a few periods of promise through the years, the astros had never won a single championship. even lifelong astros fans like tony adams found it hard to root for the team by the time that crane bought it. >> i admire the fans that went to those games. i followed them, i watched some games, but i will admit that i didn't follow them as closely as when they were winning. >> reiter: i would end up talking to adams a lot during my reporting. >> obviously, as a fanyou're, you're probably more inclined to discount or not believe the rumors about your own team.

there was so much hyperbole about the astros and it was just become such a viral thing. it was almost like the national pastime became hating the astros. >> reiter: when jim crane offered jeff luhnow the job in 2011, the astros were not only the worst major league team, they were widely viewed as having one of the worst farm systems as well. crane wanted luhnow to turn that around, while operating with maximum financial efficiency, which meant an end to pouring money into a team that wasn't ready to win anyway. >> you know, when you take a gm job, there's certn sort of conditions usually. you have to keep the coach, these are the people you're gonna be working with, et cetera, so i asked him what are the constraints, what are the conditions of the job? and he had a notebook in front of him and i thought he was gonna hand me a piece of paper with a bunch of notes on what, sort of, the requirements of this job, it was a blank piece of paper and he handed it to me across the table.

so that was, that was a message that, look, do it the way you think it needs to be done, because we obviously need help. >> so he's, like, sliding a blank piece of paper across the desk to you. >> basically, yeah. >> i believe within the first 12 to 24 months, he fired everybody from the business side. we ended up turning over probably about half of the baseball operations side, so a little less than he did over that same period of time. >> reiter: turning over-- firing? >> yeah, i mean not renewing or bringing new people in, et cetera. when you're taking an organization and completely changing the culture and changing the dynamic, that's part of what has to happen. ♪ >> i'd been at the "chronicle" for 13 years, and covered multiple general managers. but jeff luhnow was the first time i heard somebody describe a baseball player as an asset insteaof a human. and it took me back, like, wow. but with jeff luhnow, like, they were assets. because a lot of very good, decent baseball people

were let go by jeff in a way that a lot of old astros did not appreciate. people who devoted their lives to the astros, jeff luhnow was quick to say, "see ya." >> jeff was very upfront with saying it's a new wave of baseball people and he was out to change the way the game was played and change the way the game was run. ♪ >> reiter: dave trembley was an astros coach for two years before luhnow fired him. trembley told me that in nearly 30 years in professional baseball, he'd never encountered anyone like luhnow. >> looked like a wall street guy. (chuckles) he looked like a businessman. dressed very nicely. he was very prim and proper, very guarded with what he said. he just gives you the impression that he wasn't gonna let him... wasn't gonna put his guard down, he wasn't gonna let anybody get too close to him.

the culture was different. the culture was very distant. i equated it to almost like secret service or fbi. ♪ >> reiter: luhnow began staffing up his operation with people who, like him, didn't have conventional baseball backgrounds. he brought in a crew of non-traditional employees. he established a "nerd cave," which was kind of a data center that was powering the decision making. and that was led by a guy named sig mejdal, who luhnow brought with him from the cardinals. in his past life, he had been a bio-mathematician for nasa. luhnow called him director of decision sciences. he brought in all sorts of other unusual people, too-- a mechanical engineer; a computer programmer; a wall street valuations expert. these were people who hadn't played t game. luhnow didn't have anything against traditional baseball people,

as long as they shared a certain mindset. >> jeff knew that if you were going to get something done, you had to hire people that were outside-the-box thinkers. >> reiter: one of those outside-the-box thinkers was pitching coach doug white, who was brought in to help reinvent the astros farm system, and eventually became their big league bullpen coach in 2018. >> they... he just wanted people who were willing to educate themselves for the goal of reaching a championship. >> reiter: people like you. >> yeah, for sure. >> reiter: so you feel like you're kind of, like, inventing a new way of building teams and building players. >> absolutely-- every day was that, every day. because we had to literally create a system, a process of development, and we had to have the feedback for it. because it's like, jeff's the kind of guy, like, he doesn't want you just doing something. you don't just throw (bleep) at a board, right? it's like, i'm doing this for this reason.

is it working? yes, no? if it works, keep it. if it doesn't, drop it. try something else. >> reiter: early results were not promising. >> pops it, but it lands, they run into each other. and he is safe at first. the ball gets away... >> you know, we're picked to be last by every paper and magazine out there. so, you gotta be optimistic this time of year, and i think we've done some things to make the team better. >> reiter: the astros kept losing, completing a three-year run in which they lost more games than any team in half a century. crane stuck to the strategy of not trying to throw money at the problem: their payroll plummeted to the lowest in the majors. >> the first thing they do is basically cut salary to the bone. >> reiter: maury brown writes about the business of baseball for "forbes." >> they were going to do everything through smarts, through, you know, draft, scouting. >> reiter: brown and others in the industry

saw something cynical in the strategy: tanking the way the astros did meant that they would earn higher drafpicks. >> they have three consecutive years where they lose over 100 games. that allowed them to procure all the draft picks that they had. i remember at the time, you would talk to people, and they were furious about this idea. that you would purposely lose goes against everything that you're supposed to do in sports. ♪ >> reiter: in my conversations with luhnow, he pushed back on the idea that the astros were intentionally losing. >> we're never going to not try and win every game. but we're not going to go all in on 2012 to turn a 100-loss team into a 90-loss team. that's not a sound return on investment. >> reiter: in the interim, you're being made fun of on "jeopardy." >> the large valve used to control wellbore fluids on oil rigs is this "preventer"; the astros could have used one. >> what's a blowout preventer? >> you are right.

>> reiter: you know, no one's watching the games on tv. >> we had a zero rating one night, i think. >> reiter: 0.0 nielsen rating, right? >> yes. >> reiter: embarrassing plays, right? like the butt slide, you remember? >> it look like the bad news bears out there some nights. >> reiter: they were still losing when i first went down to houston for "sports illustrated." ♪ the plan was to write about whether there was any hope at all for a team that had become the laughingstock of the sports world. but what started as an inside-the-magazine feature turned into something very different. ♪ in june 2014, "sports illustrated" put my story on the cover with a bold prediction that the astros would win the world series exactly three years later. >> when that story came out, i remember thinking, no way. like, i think they're on the right track. but are they really going to win the world series in 2017?

>> reiter: the story, and especially the cover, was widely questioned. but after i'd embedded with the astros, luhnow's approach seemed to me to be the next evolution of a winning strategy that had begun to take hold a decade earlier. it was known as moneyball, after the titlof a book by michael lewis, and later a movie, about how the oakland a's exploited data and analytics to get wins from overlooked and undervalued players. >> this is the new direction of the oakland a's. we are card counters at the blackjack table, and we're gonna turn the odds on the casino. >> baseball had been more of an art than a science. and what moneyball did was it emphasized the science of the game, even the mathematics of the game. and it really changed the way, i think, teams were built. >> reiter: i worked with tom verducci at "sports illustrated" for 15 years.

he's been covering baseball for more than four decades, and has written a lot about the changes to the game. >> it became much more scientific, where peop really wanted to believe in the numbers. we can measure things now to say, this guy's going to be good. we know what kind of pitches can work based on how fast they're spinning. all this math came into the game, and the owners were like, let's get fully behind it. >> reiter: still, there's some impression around the league that the astros were taking this to an extreme, right? like, there was a lot of pushback against what they were doing. >> listen, there was a lot of pushback because this threatened the long-standing system in baseball. i mean, people were worried about their jobs because now they see, if you're an old-time scout or, you know, you've been in baseball your whole life and your wisdom is being valued based on your experiences, now that's being threatened by kids who are just out of ivy league who have these algorithms that they're running.

>> reiter: what luhnow was doing was like moneyball on steroids. the astros' approach went far beyond statistics. they were systematically combining both human expertise and technology to find a winning edge. a prime example was how they utilized something known as the "shift." re-positioning their fielders, often in extreme ways, based on data that showed where opposing batters were most likely to hit the ball. >> a lot of guys bunched over there in right field. >> people did it, but the astros were extreme in their use of numbers and their use of positioning. >> reiter: luhnow's astros were applying data to every single thing they did. it heavily informed how they maximized their draft money. like their surprise move drafting carlos correa number one, and shaving millions off his signing bonus to also lure pitcher lance mccullers. >> if you look at how to also lure piyou scout a player,rs.

you can use the numbers to really ferret out a lot more than what subjectively i see with my eyes. and that idea that the numbers can be their-- scouting still matters, but it was that idea that we could use numbers to really quantify more. that lowers your risk. there's gonna be some winners, there's gonna be some losers. and what you're trying to do is minimize the number of losers that you have. >> reiter: so it's essentially a way of maximizing efficiency of your operations. >> yeah. >> reiter: the astros' use of data also had the potential to help transform players. like drastically lowering a hitter's strikeout rate, as it did with outfielder george springer. and it could help change a solid player into a potential hall of famer. ♪ when jeff luhnow came to houston, one of the players he inherited was a slap-hitting middle infielder. (crowd cheers) the player had trouble getting signed at all out of venezuela, in large part because he was five feet, five inches tall.

most scouts using their intuition wrote him off. the guy's name was jose altuve. despite his height, the astros' data analysts saw that he could get his bat on everything, even pitches out of the strike zone. but they wondered: what if he didn't try to do that? what if he became more selective, swinging only at pitches over the heart of the plate? pitches the data revealed he could not only just hit, but hit very, very hard? >> fly ball, that's smacked. >> reiter: and it wasn't too long before this five-foot-five slap hitter transformed hielf into one of the best hitters in the game, and the face of the astros. >> there was a lot of time and effort devoted to hacking the percentages of the game from people who did not grow up within the ethos of baseball, but in the ethos of the business world. >> reiter: why do you think you upset the so-called traditionalists so much,

starting around this time? >> change is by definition hard for people to accept because they get used to things a certain way. and especially when change is stimulated by an outsider who may not have the respect for the traditions and the history and all of the things that people who grew up and spent their entire lives in the game have. >> reiter: one of those criticisms was that you and the astros were turning players into numbers, you know, into widgets. how do you take that criticism? >> it didn't bother me that much to be honest with you. i mean, this idea that if you're utilizing technology and analytics, by definition you are a cold, unfeeling person or management. it's not true. >> reiter: i want to ask you to define something for me. it's a term that i've heard you used in the past; yoused the term the edge, right? but there's a next level to that. >> i've used it a lot in my career,

it's called the bleeding edge. and what it means is you test the boundaries of what has been done. if you want to excel in the world of sports, you have to take risks and you have to be willing to get the cuts and brues that come along with that. >> i was like, wow, these guys are willing to do whatever it takes to, you know, find an advantage and i knew, like the astro were, like, the team i wanted to work for. >> reiter: antonio padilla became a manager in the astros video room. this is the first time he has spoken publicly about his experience with the astros. even though you'd previously worked for three other teams, this was like a whole new world? >> yeah, absolutely. they were like leaps and bounds over the other teams. ♪ padilla and his colleagues worked on innovative uses of data and video, they leaned into radar systems, ilike trackman.ring games. >> we had live trackman data,

where we'd be able to track pitches. so it's like, "hey, so-and-so's slider's not looking that well on trackman tonight." we need to tell one of the coaches. so, we could call down and... >> reiter: so, it's like using real-time data to make coaching decisions, make straty decisions. >> yeah, i mean, ultimately, it's up to the coaches, you know, if they want to relay that information. we don't wanna, like, tell this guy his slider's not working tonight because, it could really, like, get into their head. >> reiter: this kind of technology was helping coaches and players reach new levels of performance. >> we had edgertronic cameras, we were the first team to actually implement them into our video systems. >> reiter: these are extremely high frame rate cameras that can kind of break down what a player's doing to a level that no one's really seen before, right? >> exactly, yeah, and they're very expensive cameras. you know, a lot of teams probably knew about it and didn't want to invest in it. but the astros jussaid, hey, like this is a game changer, we're gonna put, you know, a lot of money behind this. being able to capture live footage for that is, i mean, so valuable.

♪ >> it was just a year ago the astros were dwelling in the bottom of the cellar. well, how things have changed in just one season... >> against the first place astros, still sounds funny to say, first place astros... >> let the celebrations start! the astros in the postseason for the first time since 2005. >> reiter: the astros weren't the laughingstock of the league anymore. >> and the astros have advanced to the division series against kansas city... >> they battled through every element of it and made it to today, and i couldn't be happier for them. but you know what? they're not done. >> reiter: entering 2017, they were actually contenders. >> they started believing that they were a team that could win the world series and not just hoping they were that kind of team. >> back-to-back homers by correa and... (cheers and applause) >> reiter: but the team still had a few holes. their extreme cost-cutting had rid them of most of their expensive veterans, and they had developed a new generation of up-and-coming stars.

but that meant they were very young. luhnow knew their roster needed an experienced leader to tie everything together. they eventually landed on carlos beltran. >> they called me and they said, carlos, we want you. you know, we need you in the ballclub. beltran wouldn't speak to me for this film. but i interviewed him in early 2018 as i was reporting my book, "astroball." >> i've been in the game for more than 15, 20 years, you know, so, you get to know when you see talent. you get to sense that. there's a good group of guys, young group of guys talented in their peak. >> reiter: did they mention in your talks, though, that they wanted your, like, leadership, your chemistry? >> yeah, yeah. i mean, a.j. called me about put next to me the guys that you think i could help. >> reiter: beltran was 40 years old in 2017, nearing the end of what looked to be a hall of fame career. he had a good season the year before, but based on analytics alone, it was hard to make a convincing case

for signing the aging slugger. but luhnow agreed to bet big on him-- a $16 million dollar contract-- because of the potential effect he could have on the clubhouse. >> we were missing that kind of person that, oh, that's how you do it, if you want to be a hall of famer. you have to, you have to come in early. you have to stay late. you have to watch video. you have to study the game. that's how you do it. and, and carlos did that during spring training. the video room was constantly full with young players trying to learn from him or watch their own video and all of that. so it was... it had the desired impact for sure. >> once we got carlos beltran, he was a big part of bringing the team to, like, the next level. >> everybody kind of felt like he was immediately, like, one of the leaders of the team. >> reiter: what kind of stuff would he do? what did he bring specifically? >> he was just, like, a walking encyclopedia, you know? he's been around so long and been a superstar for so long. and you could just tell immediately. he just has this, like, aura about him that, especially with the latin players,

that was kind of like their michael jordan, you know, a guy that they looked up to for a long time. ♪ >> reiter: with beltran and a few other key acquisitions, the 2017 astros became one of the best teams in baseball, almost unrecognizable from the last place team jeff luhnow had inherited. (thunder rumbling) >> hurricane harvey, now a category 4 storm... >> we're live here in houston, waters keep rising, the city is now facing an unprecedented flood event. thousands of people are in need of... >> reiter: not even the devastating category 4 hurricane harvey could break their momentum. in fact, it gave them a rallying cry. and throughout that fairy tale season, no one seemed to notice the unusual banging sound that would sometimes happen at home games, right before the opposing pitcher threw the ball. (two thumps in distance) some 28 times the night they beat baltimore. (banging sound) 41 times in a close win over the yankees.

(banging sound) 54 times that night mike bolsinger and the blue jays went down in the blow out that ended his career. (banging sound) then, in late september, the white sox's danny farquhar stepped up to the mound. it was 10:00 p.m. on a weeknight, and the stadium was pretty empty-- and quiet. right away, he heard something. (two loud thumps in distance) >> every time i would throw a change up, the catcher would put down a four. i would come set and i would hear bang. (two loud thumps in distance) >> and then finally on the third change up that i threw him, in my head, i said, "if i come set and i hear a bang, i'm calling the catcher out and we're changing our signs." sure enough, i come set, i hear the bang. (two loud thumps in distance) >> i remember being really upset, staring into their dugout. i was absolutely sure something was happening.

>> reiter: farquhar didn't publicly complain at the time, and the astros actually lost that night. but it didn't matter. they'd already made the playoffs, and a month later would face the dodgers in the world series. ♪ (crowd cheering) >> it's game one of the 2017 world series. >> reiter: what was the feel heading into the 2017 world series? >> i think people thought this was going to be a pretty good series. >> reiter: stephanie apstein was there with me, covering the fall classic for ports illustrated." >> it was the loudest ballpark i think i had ever been in. >> back at the wall, it is another home run! and the three-run lead is back. >> it wasn't until game seven that it felt like one team got out ahead in a way that the other team couldn't match. (bat cracks) >> here's a ground ball right side, could do it! the houston astros are world champions for the first time in franchise history!

>> i jumped up and i cheered. and it was a relief. and after all the years, obviously, of being a fan, to finally get there. >> the "sports illustrated" cover in 2014 and the article by ben reiter, they nailed it. >> it didn't quite seem real at that moment. and actually for several weeks after, it didn't quite sink in, you know? i would text my brother that they did win, right? you know, i didn't dream that. it's like, oh no, they won. (playing trumpet) >> it gave people a chance to celebrate at a time when there was little to celebrate in houston. and all these flooded people, they had something to rejoice for a little bit. >> the city of houston needed this after hurricane harvey! >> we'll overcome any adversity, no matter what. >> but the astros picked us up! they gave us some hope! they gave us something to cheer for! and now we're champions of the world! (cheering) >> it only took me 20 years to get to this position.

but you know what, i'm happy, i'm blessed. and i want to give the glory and the honor to god for this moment. >> as the architect, i got to tell you, there's a lot of people doing the drawings behind me. this is houston's first championship in baseball, and i couldn't be prouder to be general manager of the team that delivers it to them. >> reiter: that night on the field, jim crane told me even when the heat was on them, he'd always encouraged luhnow to stick to their plan. our once outlandish "si" cover prediction had actually, unbelievably, come true. >> three years and four months ago, the cover of "sports illustrated" was the astros were going to win the world series in 2017, and ben joins us. congrats on the prediction, how was your night, ben? >> it was short, dan. i think i still smell like champagne and cigar sme from the astros clubhouse. but, you know, when we made that prediction three-and-a-half years ago, we thought it had a chance, but to see it actually come through?

pretty amazing. ♪ (voiceover): i was always mindful of the more ruthless aspects of what luhnow was doing with the astros, but it wasn't until the next year when i was on my book tour that they did something that really made me question their tactics and especially their ethics. it started with a mid-season trade. >> we have breaking news to bring you from the rogers center tonight. closing pitcher roberto osuna has been traded to the houston astros. the 24-year-old is awaiting trial for domestic assault. he's also serving a 75-game suspension in accordance with mlb policy. >> reiter: the fact that jeff luhnow and jim crane, especially at the height of the me too movement, would trade for an accused domestic abuser made me wonder if i'd missed something, if the astros were willing to go to a darker place than i imagined in their pursuit of an edge. >> the osuna case, thwhich castsed inthis model front officege. and model organization in a different light,

what do you make of that? >> reiter: well, pick your word, bob-- problematic, questionable, morally troubling. (voiceover): i found it indefensible at the time, and years later, i still have trouble fully understanding it. roberto osuna is suspended for 75 games for domestic assault. walk me through the decision to add him to the astros roster. >> roberto osuna's a player that we had been watching for a long time since he was originally signed. i knew the quality of him as a reliever for sure. we didn't have a closer, and we needed to address that. we had asked for him the last year during the offseason and last year at the trade deadline. and the cost was way too high. obviously, the cost had come down, because he was suspended and, and they wanted to move him. so i talked to jim about it, and we discussed it, and made a decision to go ahead and, and execute the trade. >> they saw osuna as a distressed asset.

the blue jays were kind of looking to unload him, and they were willing to unload him for a lot less than it would have taken to get a closer of his caliber, and so where you might see another team say, "this doesn't really feel worth, worth it," the astros did the math and were like, "this is great. "we get a closer for less than we would have gotten him. done." >> reiter: i feel like the astros at this point had been through so much bad pr and come out the other side as this, like... you know, as champ... literal champions that i wonder if they're like, well, we can take on more of this and we'll be fine. you know, memories are short, winning lasts forever. >> i think if you think you're right, you're willing to endure a lot to get there. and i think that sometimes that is very beneficial to your career because it helps you ignore the haters, but sometimes the haters have a point and you miss it. >> reiter: osuna became a key part of the team's success. his case never went to trial,

and the pr debacle was largely forgotten. >> reiter: but in 2019, as the team celebrated their second world series appearance in three years, luhnow's top assistant, a former wall street valuation expert named brandon taubman, brought it all back. >> yeah, that was, definitely a, a night i won't forget. i'm standing, like, right next to him in the clubhouse, celebrating, and, you know, there is obviously, like, champagne flowing. >> reiter: stephanie apstein was there that night too. i was in the clubhouse with two other female reporters and there was an astros executive, whose name i did not at the time know, who started yelling toward us that he was so (bleep) glad they'd gotten osuna. "i'm so (bleep) glad that we got osuna. i'm so (bleep) glad we got osuna." and, i remember just being, like, so shocked by that. >> and eventually, i came to understand that it was astros assistant general manager brandon taubman

who was engaged in that outburst, in part because he'd been drinking, but in part because the team felt that they got too much grief from writers, specifically female writers, about having traded for a player who had been suspended for domestic violence. and so he was sort of making a point that, yet again, the astros were right. >> reiter: taubman's ire that night was specifically focused on one of the reporters standing with apstein, who'd been particularly critical and persistent. >> i went to astros pr to request an interview with brandon taubman. they said they were not gonna make him available and they had no comment. >> reiter: two days later, apstein published a story on si.com about the incident. and the astros pr office went on the attack. >> the astros responded, calling her article "misleading and completely irresponsible." >> big part of this seems to be

that the astros suggested this didn't happen. >> and said that it was a fabricated story. >> reiter: i think the quote was, like, fabricating a story where there was none. >> where none exists, yeah. >> reiter: where none exists. the astros claimed that taubman had just been trying to support osuna after a bad outing on the mound that night. >> fortunately for me, unfortunately for them, there was a room full of reporters. so pretty quickly other reporters corroborated what i had seen. >> npr's david folkenflik reported details of the exchange. >> i want to be clear it was intense, it was pointed, it was at this cluster of three women. ♪ >> reiter: by the end of the week, the incident was threatening to overshadow the world series. jim crane issued a personal apology to apstein. and taubman was fired. >> first of all, apologies to stephanie and to the rest of the people

that were involved in the incide. we have separated with brandon taubman, he is no longer an employee of the astros. his behavior was inappropriate and not representative of who the astros are and our culture and what we stand for. >> reiter: taubman now works in commercial real estate. he wouldn't go on camera or comment on anything other than to offer that he still "deeply regrets" his behavior and the pain it caused to many. including putting the astros in a difficult position. he said over the past four years, he has tried to atone for his mistakes and has volunteered as a data scientist for a domestic violence organization. taubman had led the charge on many of the astros' cutting edge initiatives, like trackman and edgertronic cameras. but he was also seen as overly assertive and confrontational. >> somebody made a mistake and they have paid for that,

and we have paid for that and obviously everybody, if we could do it all over again, we... i mean, i, i would've... i would've prevented that from happening, but i didn't know it was happening, right? >> reiter: well, wait a second, we were talking about taubman. like, he made a mistake, but it wasn't just limited to that moment, right? this was like... the roots of this went back years and, like, involved a lot of different aspects of the organation. >> but brandon didn't talk a lot about osuna. i mean, that... this was... i was surprised that this even came up. and i will tell you that the astros did not do things correctly in handling that situation. and i think paid the price for it, basically. >> reiter: so you wouldn't kind of draw a connection between a certain aspect of the organization's culture and that reaction either? >> well, that reaction was protecting the astros, but was a completely illogical, ridiculous reaction to have, and it was wrong. completelyrong, and it was above my pay grade.

i had nothing to do with that decision, and i had to be the one to execute it, which made me look like the person that was somehow involved, even though i wasn't. >> reiter: but you were in the meetings, though, when some of these decisions were being made, right? >> there was a series of emails going back and forth. i was getting ready for the world series. i did not have an active role in those conversations at all. ♪ >> reiter: a couple of weeks later, after a devastating game seven loss in the world series, things went from bad to worse. >> the article in "the athletic" that has everybody talking quotes the former astros pitcher mike fiers directly claiming that in 2017, the world series run, the asos used a camera system to steal signs and alert their hitters in real time as to what pitch was coming. >> that means the manager was aware of it, that means the bench coach was probably aware of it. the players certainly were aware of it! they were in on it! >> the very sad implication

is that somehow the astros' 2017 world series title is tainted. >> should the astros be stripped of their title? >> yes, they should. the title is illegitimate. >> reiter: in a stunning admission, former astros pitcher mike fiers and three other members of the organization told reporters evan drellich and ken rosenthal about the sign-stealing scheme the team had been using two years earlier. >> they used a camera in center field. they would then transfer the sign from the catcher. then, using audible sound in the dugout, a trash can, to alert the hitter. if there's no bang, fastball. if there's a ban something soft is coming. >> reiter: it was a revelation that shocked me. and it upended much of the mythology around the astros, which i had helped create. >> the astros are now public enemy number one in baseball. >> this is just far too calculated. far too cunning, far too deceitful. this is ridiculous, man.

>> reiter: the astros had gone over the edge with one of baseball's most storied traditions: decoding the signs opposing pitchers and catchers use to communicate. >> signs are super important in baseball because the pitcher can throw a variety of different pitches, but the catcher needs to know what's coming. otherwise, you're not going to be able to catch the ball, literally. >> it's basically a way for a catcher to relay to the pitcher a suggestion of what pitch to throw to this batter. some of these sign systems, i was like, "wow, i have to be a mathematician to figure this out." how do you do this in the mide of a game with 50,000 fans and a dude on second base? >> some teams and players are better at reading sequences and signals than others. and some teams make it a priority and some teamson't. it's like poker, right? so, can i get a tell off of you or not? >> reiter: teams are looking for all this stuff. >> all that stuff, yea

and that's absolutely one million percent fair game. >> reiter: what's not fair game is using technology to help you figure out the opposing team's signs in real time. ♪ in the years leading up to 2017, the league had begun allowing teams to use cameras and monitor live video feeds during games, but only for the purpose of analyzing players' performance and helping decide whether to challenge umpires' calls. >> expanded video replay is coming to major league baseball. >> there will be 12 cameras at every stadium. >> ...to make most umpire calls subject to video review. >> having video monitors close to the dugout proximity was a recipe for disaster. i mean, it's like if you have a child, and he's coming home from school and you tell him, "you know, i'm gonna leave the cookies out. you can have one cookie when you come home." come on.

(laughing): he's, he's gonna have more than one. ♪ >> reiter: the temptation was hard to resist. in 2017, mlb investigated both the red sox and yankees over sign-stealing allegations. >> breaking right now: some bombshell accusations against the red sox. the team is accused tonight of cheating in the dugout. >> i take any issue that affects the play of the game on the field extremely seriously. >> red sox video replay personnel reportedly sent pitch info. >> they didn't use this between every pitch of every game, it seems, but rather they waited for someone to be on second base. and they did that because it's very easy when you're on second to then relay the signal to the batter. >> reiter: it would become known as the baserunner system. and it would eventually come out that the astros had a version of that, too. antonio padilla admits he and his fellow video room staffers helped run the system to great effect. >> so, you could call down and say, like,

"hey, the catchers are using "outs plus one for their sign sequence, so relay that to the runner on second." i think the codebreaking could definitely give an advantage. you know, if you're able to tell the runner on second what signs they're potentially using, i think that could definitely help. ♪ >> reiter: inside the astros clubhouse, padilla says sign stealing beme a huge focus. >> it got to the point where when we were playing certain teams that we thought were doing other things, that we would use multiple signs, even with, like, no runners on. >> reiter: it sounds like an extremely paranoid environment. >> yeah, and that's li the perfect way to describe it. it was kind of like this paranoia where we just like had to do everything to protect, to protect ourselves and try to gain an advantage to... um, try to compete. >> reiter: in september 2017, the commissioner of baseball, rob manfred, tried to contain the burgeoning sign-stealing problem

without causing more of an issue. he imposed symbolic fines on the red sox and yankees, and privately warned club personnel not talk about the topic to the media. ♪ he also sent a memo on illegal sign-stealing to all 30 teams and put managers and gms on notice they'd be held accountable in the future. >> "if you're doing these kinds of things, you better stop now, because you're going to be dealt with harshly." that should have set off alarms and sirens and whistles everywhere, among all 30 teams. and it didn't in houston. >> reiter: but after commissioner manfred sent out that memo, the astros would not only continue to carry out a baserunner scheme similar to what the sox and yankees had done, but also something far more insidious. padilla told me it had begun earlier in the season with an unusual request from the astros bench coach, alex cora.

>> this was probably like two months into thseason. we're like well into our way, and i get asked to put a tv monitor down below the dugouts. and... at the time, we didn't have, like, any tvs down there, so, i thought when i asked to put a monitor down there i thought they just wanted to see, like, when the inning was over, or, like, who was batting, so i was happy to oblige by that. >> reiter: what was it actually used for? >> from my understanding, it was used for, um, looking at the signs from the catcher and then relaying those signs to the batter at the plate. >> reiter: and how were they doing it? >> they would look at the tv monitor, and then be able to see the signs of the catcher, and then have some type of audible... sound. or, like, a bang on something to relay that to the hitter, what type of pitch was coming. i mean instantly i knew, like, it wasn't right, but what was i gonna do?

i was, like, the lowest guy on the totem pole there. you know, if the coaches knew, and the other players knew, then i got-- you know, i'm just rolling with it. >> reiter: did you feel, like, guilty as the season went on and this kept happening? 'cause, like, i know you weren't doing it night to night, but you facilitated it. >> (sighing): yeah. i mean, it was definitely something that's kind of on your conscience, and then, um... you know... you're thinking that, like, "okay, like, maybe this has a part of our success," so you start to feel more guilty about that, and then obviously, like, it's kind of like in the back of your mind over the years, before it, like, gets out to the public. >> reiter: there was a big incentive for guys like padilla to not rock the boat. it could jeopardize what's known as their playoff share. >> one thing that people don't understand or maybe don't know about is the way that compensation for a lot of team employees works. they get paid by the team, but at the end of the year, teams that make the playoffs are allowed to vote on

who gets a share of the gate money from the playoffs. and so, especially if you make the world series, especially if you win the world series, that's a lot of money. and so, i think that a lot of team employees are aware that... the team is their boss, but also the players are kind of their boss. and so, i think that that... leads to some difficult incentives. >> reiter: so, 2017, the astros win the world series, do they vote to give you a playoff share? >> yeah, a full-time share. a full share. >> reiter: how much was that? >> $450,000, i think. >> reiter: and you're making $45,000 a year? >> yeah, it was like ten x my salary. >> reiter: wow. >> yeah. i mean, i was able to pay off my student loans, able to pay off my car. you know, it just, like, alleviated a lot of, you know, things i... had going on as far as, like, finances. >> reiter: it's like winning the lottery. >> oh, exactly. it is, it is. it's a-- i mean, it's a windfall. >> reiter: with the playoff share system existing,

did it feel like this was a big incentive to always keep the players happy and always stay in their good graces, and anything they asked for, you were gonna give, to you? >> yeah, i wouldn't say it's a, i wouldn't say that was, like, the incentive, because that was-- i guess that was part of the job. you know, we were there for the players. we were there for the coaches as well. >> reiter: if an influential player asks you to do something, like, you're probably not gonna say no, right? >> yeah, i don't think i've ever said no unless it was just something that couldn't be done. but... yeah, i always tried my best, i guess, to appease whatever, you know, they needed me to do. i>> reiter: once thest, astros' banging scheme finally became public in november 2019, the league began investigating the team. so did one extremely die-hard astros fan-- tony adams. >> reiter: when you first read the reports, and there was all this supporting video,

did that start to change the way you had viewed that 2017 championship two years earlier? >> uh... i think at that point, no. i was still kind of waiting to get more information. obviously you don't want it to be true, so you were hoping that there was a chance this just wasn't accurate. um... but i went onto some other sites and found some information, and somebody had posted some video of... some plays where they were banging on the trash can. >> reiter: adams realized that he might be able to figure out how widespread the banging was by watching-- and liening closely to-- old broadcasts of the games. >> and that kind of became the puzzle that i wanted to try to solve. >> reiter: what led you toake this decision, though? >> the core of it is i wanted to know the truth. i really wanted to know what happened. >> reiter: adams would have to review more than 8,200 pitches the astros had faced at home that season. so he developed an app. >> well, i'm a web developer,

so i went with what i knew, and basically developed a web application that would allow me to view the pitches, make a selection if there was a bang or not, and jump to the next pitch. so i was able to segment each pitch into an audio file and the spectrogram shows the full spectrum of the frequency, so this allows you to see basically all the sounds. these lines here are actually the announcers talking. >> beltran with just one of his 14 home runs hitting right-handed this year. >> this line here is actually where the ball either hits the bat or hits the catcher's mitt. (ball hitting glove) >> upstairs, two and one. >> and you can see here, in the lower frequency, a little spike here, a little blob here. that's actually a bang. (muffled thud) >> reiter: these really jump out. >> yeah, yeah. >> reiter: even i can see these. >> (laughing): yes... >> reiter: and i haven't looked at 8,200 of these. (both chucklg) adams ended up logging 1,143 bangs out of those 8,200 pitches across dozens of home games. he also pinpointed when the banging may have come to an end:

that night when danny farquhar was on the mound. >> danny farquhar on the season between tampa... >> this is the farquhar game. >> gattis pinch hitting for. >> so it's the bottom of the eighth. gattis was up. and you can see here that there was a bang in this one. if we listen to it, it's very obvious. the crowd wasn't very loud that time. the announcers were not talking a lot during this game. (two thuds echo in distance) very clear. >> reiter: very loud. >> here we go with another change up, and there's a double bang. (two thuds echo in distance) >> reiter: man, that sounds like thunder or something, right? >> yeah, it's-- it's very obvious. (distorted cheering) >> you can see that the crowd is, is pretty sparse, so there's not a lot of crowd noise. some point, farquhar made a connection that whenever he was throwing a breaking ball, he was hearing this sound. he gets a signal. (two thuds echo in distance) here. (crowd cheering)

and if you look, you can see... "i think they have the signals." >> reiter: so you're reading his lips. >> yeah, yeah. >> reiter: you can see he says, "i think they have..." >> right. >> reiter: this is the moment. >> right. and if you look at the game here, after this four-seamer, they called for a breaking ball, and they got the bang and that's when he stepped off. and there was no more bangs for the rest of the game, even though there were plenty of pitches that were breaking balls and should have been. >> reiter: essentially, the second that danny farquhar heard this, it stopped. >> it stopped. >> reiter: at least this form of... of sign stealing. >> correct. there were no more bangs during the regular season, and i wasn't able to hear anything in, in the postseason, either. >> reiter: and we know that the moment that happened with farquhar, the guys behind the dugout were taking the tv down, like, hiding everything. >> right. that was... >> reiter: like, that was a moment of panic for the team. >> they, they panicked at that point. ♪ >> reiter: after six weeks of research, adams was on the brink of doing one of the hardest things he'd ever done-- making all this damning evidence against his beloved astros public.

>> it was a wednesday, and i had the site ready. i'd written the tweet. and then i... i paused for a second, because i knew if i hit send, that was it, it was out there. ♪ (keyboard keys clacking) i'd never been part of something that went viral. (chuckles) that did. it took off pretty quickly. >> one of my buddies actually texted me. he was like, "man, have you seen this?" i remember looking back on, like, mlb.com, like, "man, when was the last time i pitched against them?" and i looked at it, and i saw it was the highest one. and that's when i finally was like, "man, okay, this is for real." like, they really cheated on my game, against me. ♪ it was a heck of an edge to take. when you know it's coming, you're taking everything away. especially a guy that is not as elite as a lot of people.

how you think it's okay would be probably the number one question that i'd ask. how can you not think this was wrong, what you did? ♪ >> reiter: in the end, adams linked at least 19 astros hitters to the scheme. a few, most notably josé altuve, showing little to no involvement, while most others were in deep. (distant sirens wailing) but there would be very few formal consequences for them, because of a fateful decision unknown to the public at the time by the commissioner at the outset of his investigation. >> he decided to grant them immunity to speak openly to him. in part, i think, to avoid a union grievance, in part because i think he felt that nobody would tell him the truth if they were worried about punishment, in part because he felt that it was going to be hard to determine

who used the system for three games, versus 30, versus the whole season, that it was going to be hard to assign degrees of culpability. for all of those reasons, he decided to give them immunity. >> reiter: also probably in part because he didn't want to damage his own product at a certain point. >> sure. i mean, if you suspend the astros, are they not supposed to field a team? do they bring up all their triple-a guys-- that's a big... that's a big decision. ♪ >> reiter: commissioner manfred wouldn't talk to us about the decision or answer written questions. none of the 2017 astros players approached would talk, nor the players' union. but when it came to light, some players from other teams were publicly critical of the immunity decision. >> i thought manfred's punishment was weak, giving them immunity. >> to cheat like that and not get anything, it's, it's sad to see for sure. >> you know they're gonna be able to go out there and compete with no ramifications at all, which is wrong, and i think the commissioner completely handled it

the wrong way. >> reiter: manfred went on espn to defend the decision. >> well, and... you could've made the choice to go with the management people, um, and sort of given them immunity and found out how the players were involved. whatever, um, dissatisfaction is out there with the grant of immunity to players, i think it would have been ten times worse if you let the management people off and then tried to go after the players. >> i mean, i would have thrown some of the ringleaders out of baseball for a considerable period of time. when you cheat on the field, telling people when a fastball is coming, you're really playing with the heart of the game. ♪ >> reiter: former mlb commissioner fay vincent told me that granting the players immunity sent the wrong message. >> baseball and manfred decided it was better

to have it be a minor event than a major event. in other words, to have it a major event, you were going to have to teach players that one of the problems of cheating is you can get caught. and if you get caught, it can cost you. >> reiter: let me ask you-- it's kind of like a devil's advocate position that i've heard. people have cheated in baseball since, like, just after the first sign was put down. what's the difference? people have been doing it forever and this is just the latest iteration of that. >> the reason we have to have compliance with rules, is that if you don't have rules, you don't have a system. the rules are what make a game a game. >> so the question is, what would i have done as commissioner? i'd have thrown them all out. i would have said they're out for the rest of their lives. >> reiter: rest of their lives? lifetime ban? >> lifetime ban. >> reiter: but when it came to accountability,

commissioner manfred's focus was where he said it would be after the red sox and yankees cheating dust ups back in 2017-- on the manager and general manager. >> the one question they just kept hammering, they wanted to know if jeff knew about it, and they wanted to know if any of it continued into 2018. and, i told them, you know, from my knowledge, i don't think jeff knew. >> reiter: did it feel like they're kind of zeroing in on jeff luhnow's responsibility here? >> yeah, it seemed like that from that testimony. that, you know, they really wanted to find out if, if he knew or not. the league ended up interviewing 68 witnesses and reviewed tens of thousands of emails, texts, video clips, and photos. when the commissioner's investigation was finished, the only astros sanctioned for the cheating were jeff luhnow, and the manager, aj hinch. both were suspended from baseball for a year. >> the people that created it, that ran it, that executed it,

essentially those people didn't get punished. and i took the responsibility for the organization, as did aj. >> reiter: while the league's investigators didn't uncover evidence that luhnow knew about the banging scheme, they did find evidence that he had "some knowledge" of the team's other illegal sign-stealing efforts. a charge luhnow continues to deny. manfred pointed out that luhnow had never circulated his memo about electronic sign stealing back in 2017; and as gm, it was his job to make sure the team was following the rules. >> i was punished because i was the general manager overseeing baseball operations of a team that violated the rules. and i was punished for not forwarding a memo. i guess if i had pressed forward to the memo

and forwarded it to aj, which he already had the memo, so i didn't feel there was a need to do that. and this memo was well known in the industry. it's not like people lack the information. every player, every person involved knew what was in the memo. >> reiter: since the scandal, i've tried-- unsuccessfully-- to talk to aj hinch, who's now the manager of the detroit tigers. the league's report noted that while he didn't stop the cheating, he signaled his disapproval on at least two occasions by smashing the video monitor used to carry it out. his only extensive interview about the scandal was on mlb network with tom verducci. >> my mindset at that point was to demonstrate that i didn't like it. >> so what did, what did you do? >> i hit it-- i mean, i just, a bat, i mean, i didn't like it. >> you took a bat to it. >> yeah, i didn't like it. >> i should've done more. >> i remember one day i saw the monitor was broken. i think he felt like it was actually hurting the team at the time, and i think he just

got frustrated with it and decided to try to end it there without, without telling anybody. just kind of doing it on his own. >> reiter: in your understanding, who was the driving force behind wanting to implement this system? >> yeah, so it seemed like it was carlos beltran's idea. you know, obviously he didn't force everybody to do it, but it seemed like, from my perspective at the time, he was having, you know, one of his worst seasons and he probably thought, "hey, like, i'm here to help this team win. "i'm having a bad season, let me try to drum up something to get this team going and get myself going as well." >> reiter: did anyone try to push back against him? >> i've heard of some other players saying, like, hey, this isn't right, we shouldn't do this. but honestly, it ultimately came down to the coaches. like, the coaches knew about it, the hitting coaches, our manager, obviously the bench coach as well.

but if they didn't shut it down then, i mean, players are just gonna follow their leaders, in my opinion. >> reiter: was it almost like beltran had more power than aj hinch? >> that's, that's tough to answer. i mean, he definitely had a way of having the team, like, go behind, like, anything that he wanted to do. i think aj kind of bought into that as well. >> reiter: beltran was the only player mentioned by name in the commissioner's report. he's apologized, but also spread the blame to an organizational culture that didn't exactly emphasize rule following. >> i wish i would've asked more questions about what we were doing. i wish the organization would have said to us, "hey man, what you guys doing, we need to stop this." nobody really said anything. we're winning. >> reiter: after the report came out, beltran lost his new job as the skipper of the new york mets

before managing a single game for them. but now he's back with the mets, as a special assistant to their general manager. the report also singled out bench coach alex cora, who was by then managing the red sox. boston fired cora. and though he was later cleared of wrongdoin in a sign-stealing investigation there... he was then suspended by the league for the astros' cheating. cora apologized. and like beltran, he was rehired and continues to lead the red sox today. for jeff luhnow, the commissioner's year-long suspension was only the beginning. >> i was on a plane on the way to cabo with my wife to celebrate her birthday and our anniversary. and i had asked jim a few days before, i said, "hey should i cancel my trip? because i know they're getting ready to make a decision." he's like "no, no, no, don't worry about it. "go, go on the trip, enjoy yourself." i got a call from jim as we were in baggage claim.

and i took it. and he told me what his decision was as far as my employment goes-- very short conversation. >> reiter: how long was that phone call? >> it was like 30 seconds maybe. >> i'm going above and beyond mlb's penalty. today, i have made the decision to dismiss aj hinch and jeff luhnow. we need to move forward with a clean slate, and the astros will become stronger, a stronger organization, because of this today. >> reiter: as for jim crane, manfred went out of his way to make it clear in his report that he'd had nothing to do with the scandal, noting he'd instructed luhnow to make sure his team abided by the rules. my question is why would the commissioner go to such pains, so prominently, to clear the owner of the team

of any responsibility for this scandal? >> because the commissioner works for the owners, and, you know, the most difficult thing in the world is to be working for people in a situation where you also have to discipline them. in baseball, the commissioner has the duty, the obligation, to police the very people he works for. that's a relationship that is totally all by itself. that's a conflict. that's a challenge. that's an impossibility. ♪ >> reiter: as commissioner, fay vincent was famous for his clashes with owners, and was ousted after just three years. he recalled something one of the owners once told him. >> well, he said, "your job is to make us money. "you know, we can run the baseball part. "we understand baseball. we don't need you. "all we want you to do is think of ways

"to expand our revenue base and make money for us. "and if you're not making money for us, >> reiter: the commissioner you'is thereng in the way." to serve the interests of the owners. >> hundred percent. >> reiter: in the end, commissioner manfred took away four of the astros' draft picks and fined the team $5 million-- the largest allowable by the league, but a drop in the bucket for crane's roughly $2 billion business. did the fallout from the sign-stealing scandal materially affect jim crane or the astros? >> in the long run, no. in the long run, it didn't affect them at all. i mean, look, you know, there's this report, in the eyes of fans outside of, you know, houston or fans of the astros, they're vilified. they're gonna get booed, you know, in perpetuity due to this thing. was jim crane affected? no, of course not. i mean, all the successes

that have come along with the world championships, all of the money that would come in due to attendance. ♪ >> reiter: earlier this year, manfred actually made a surprising admission. he told a reporter he now regretted giving the players immunity. that it was "maybe not my best decision ever." a month later, the league's owners voted to extend him as commissioner through 2029. ♪ >> the astrowin it. welcome to first place, houston astros, for the first time in 2023. >> astros get the win, moving them into a virtual tie with the seattle mariners for first place. >> 12-2 victory, and they have their biggest lead of the season now. ♪ >> reiter: with the astros battling for the 2023 playoffs, and having won on the world series

again last year, i returned to houston to try to talk to jim crane and others in the organization about the legacy of the scandal and how they'd moved forward. no one inside the team would speak to me or answer written questions, other than to say that crane doesn't do interviews about things from the past. and to point out the team was on pace to draw three million fans in 2023. but for issue that team and league have tried to put behind them, there is lingering sense of injustice on all sides. >> i understand where they're coming from. i'm not saying it's right, but every team does it. we just happen to be the ones that get caught. >> i would just ignore them. they say whatever they wanna say, it's all talk. >> i think they dispelled any thoughts that they were bad after that, right? they just won, so. >> reiter: in '22. >> well, they kept, they didn't win the world series every year, but they were dominant over... since then. they've been dominant since then, and then they won last year, so.

>> reiter: so the people who say that world series ring is not legitimate, you're not buying that. >> that's what they say. >> reiter: yeah, that's what they say. >> i mean, this last one is pretty legit. >> reiter: despite their success, the asterisk on the astros continues to feed conspiracy theories about cheating beyond the banging. like the persistent accusation that jose altuve knew what pitches were coming the night he lifted the astros to the 2019 world series, thanks to a buzzer hidden under his jersey. >> but what about jose altuve? don't take off my shirt! >> buzzers taped to their bodies? >> this electronic device business really takes it in a different direction. >> at least one player had heard from multiple sources about a buzzer system... >> and when he's asked about it... >> i don't know, i'm too shy. last time i did that, i got in trouble with my wife! >> in this case, there is a villain. >> reiter: was jose altuve wearing a buzzer? >> no. no, there is absolutely, like, zero truth to any of that.

you just hate to see, like, the media kind of run some really, like, good people into t ground with that. and... even some other players around the league just buy into the conspiracy theory of that. and that just, like, absolutely was, like, never even discussed. >> obviously, the bad stuff isoing to get more clicks and more headlines, but i think the good stuff needs to be talked about a lot more, just because they're doing things that teams are still trying to catch up with today, that they were doing years ago. >> reiter: when you look around baseball today, a few of the astros from that 2017 team are still in houston. more are playing for other teams. and many of the people who helped luhnow reinvent the astros, who helped, are now spread throughout the league. >> you look at the baltimore orioles. you look at the giants. milwaukee, when they took sterns.

people started hiring folks away from the astros, because everybody wanted to do what the astros were doing. >> the baseball world's been against them from day one. because these weren't baseball guys. ♪ and now, you know, in 2023, people realize the astros are the standard for building winning baseball. >> they were at the forefront of what is just standard procedure now in terms of what we know about leveraging technology, in terms of evaluation, training. what really, i think, got the astros in trouble is they didn't know where to stop. >> reiter: but who ultimately benefits from maximizing efficiency in a baseball context? >> the benefit of it is not for the benefit of the fan. we didn't wind up with a better game. we wound up with a more boring game. to me, we lost some of the reason why we're fans.

and that is the mystique and the chemistry and the magic, and the things that don't matter to a technocrat. >> reiter: baseball has always been a business, but it became more a business like any other business in a certain way. >> yeah, i mean, listen, you don't want to be naïve and think baseball was always just a game. (chuckles) it always was business. but it became just a brutally efficient business. i don't think it's going to be one of the proud moments for baseball, what happened during that era, when technology outpaced baseball's ability to deal with it. >> reiter: over the past several seasons, major league baseball has clamped down. they've strictly limited the availability of in-game video and hired an outside security firm to police the replay rooms. and this season, they put heavy restrictions on the infamous shift. the dark art of sign stealing was also dealt a blow with new technology called pitchcom

that allows the pitcher and catcher to communicate via transmitters. something that has yet to be hacked, as far as we know. what do you think is the lasting legacy of the houston astros of the past decade? >> well, it is a lasting legacy, first of all. it's too big of a sin in baseball to be washed away ever. and we'll be talking about the astros 50 years from now as a team that stole signs. and the second paragraph will be about how talented they were. and they won their first world championship. but i think in a broader sense, what they did was they defined, in its own way, a dirty era in baseball. ♪ >> reiter: in exile from baseball in spain, jeff luhnow remains defiant. >> here in spain, i've never even been asked a question about it. i've never even been asked a question about baseball.

they don't care. (speaking spanish): >> reiter: the second division soccer team he purchased here with investors after being fired from the astros is in first place, and he's not stopping there. >> we're buying and operating second, third, and fourth division clubs in key strategic markets. my motto in the astros was find and develop the best young talent in baseball and build a sustainable winner. we're doing exactly the same strategy here in football that we did in baseball. (cheering) about some of the results of that strategy-- including the degree to which the astros continued to steal signs in the 2017 playoffs. between tony adams' research, the league's investigation, and all the other reporting, it's just not clear.

of course, it's also unclear how many of their opponents were also cheating, and to what extent. (bat cracks, crowd cheers) but in a game of razor-thin differentials, we'll never know if the cheati was what had given the astros the ultimate edge. >> the scandal is, like, five percent of the sty. 95 percent of the story is, how did we create a system that has proven to be pretty dang good over a long period of time? and i don't think that has anything to do with one cheating scandal. when did the cheating help? and when did the cheating not help? and who wanted to get the cheating? and who didn't want to get, i mean, you could go down a million different roads on that. and so that's why i'm saying like, it's not just we cheated, we won, game over. that's not how this works. >> reiter: to me, it's almost like the biggest tragedy is that, like, we don't know. >> and we never will. >> that's the deal that they made.

they get to have their title questioned forever. i think that is the outcome, that people are allowed to say whatever they want about you, and there's nothing you can do about it. and it's what the greeks would call a tragedy, right? the thing that made you great is the thing that brought you down. ♪ >> the players that decided to do this, they made that decision. that's on them. it's the fans' team, you know, and so i will always be an astros fan. i think most astros fans feel the same way. (fireworks crackling) >> ...major league baseball trade deadline, the mets deal justin verlander back to houston... >> framber valdez, the first lefty in franchise history to throw a no-hitter. >> this team is about october. this team is about another ring... >> i feel great about the players that we have now, the team that we have now, the organization. but they will go away at some point.

the thing that remains are the fans. this is our team and, um... ...it's h-town versus everyone. >> and when you talk about the astros, remember: the championship pedigree, you can't sleep on them. >> here they are a playoff team for the seventh consecutive year, the fourth longest run in major league baseball history. >> you know, sky's the limit. it looks like the same old astros again, here they come. just took them a little longer to get there. ♪ >> go to pbs.org/frontline for more about the history of sign-stealing in baseball. >> when you cheat on the field telling people when a fastball is coming, you're really playing with the heart of the game. >> and listen to more of ben reiter's podcast, the edge . >> one of my buddies actually text me. he's like, man, have you seen this? >> connect with frontline on

facebook and, formerly known as twitter and watch anytime on the pbs app, youtube or pbs.org/frontline. >> elon musk has one rule: never be constrained by the rules. >> he considers that internet world a battleground where anything is fair game. >> i thought he'd be a good owner. i thought he could get stuff done. >> since musk took over what would you say your main findings have been? >> number one i would say harassment has increased. >> i really can't emphasize this enough, we must protect free speech. >> define free speech, where are the limits? and what are the trade-offs? >> narrator: next time on frontline. >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporati for public broadcasting. additional support is provided by the abrams foundation, committed to excellence journalism...

park foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more at macfound.org and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler. and additional support from laura debonis. and the charina endowmennt fund. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org. >> for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org/frontline. ♪

frontline's "the astros edge" is available on amazon prime video. ♪♪ you're watching pbs. ♪♪

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