MLB Exclusive

Mention cheating in baseball and usually the topic is spying on the catcher’s signs from the outfield or some other nefarious piece of gamesmanship.

Not anymore. There was some real cheating and someone got caught and will be going to jail for it.

A federal judge in Houston on Monday sentenced Christopher Correa, the former scouting director of the St. Louis Cardinals, to nearly four years in prison for hacking the Houston Astros’ player personnel database and email. An executive named Jeff Luhnow had left the Cardinals to rebuild the Astros and returned to the Cardinals a laptop in which certain information and passwords had been stored.

Luhnow made public in June of 2014 that the Astros’ database and email had been breached, having seen it appear in media reports. It also included internal discussions of player moves. Luhnow had left the Cardinals in 2011; in 2013, prosecutors said, Correa improperly downloaded a file of the Astros’ scouting list of all players eligible for that year’s draft. Prosecutors said he also improperly reviewed notes of trade discussions and certain salary data.

Correa said in a letter to the court he was “overwhelmed with remorse and regret for my actions.” Alas, the damage is done – to him and to baseball.

We’ve moved beyond the era of corked bats, spitballs, sharpened spikes and steroids in the pursuit of an unfair advantage in a competitive sport. Much of the game is now played in the front office and what Correa did goes far beyond seeking that extra edge. It was actually judged to be criminal.
 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman