When apologies belie redemption

The only thing the Houston Astros have to do now is win it all this coming baseball season.

Winning it all will put aside any lingering concerns about their cheating scandal.

It’s a scandal because they were caught.

I suspect other teams are and were doing some form of the same sign stealing the Astros were.

Their integrity as an organization has come under fire for it.

Their recent weak apologies from several players and owner Jim Crane did not help their cause. On the contrary, it only further stirred the anti-Astros pot of unsentimentality.

You can fully expect some pitchers somewhere throwing the high, hard one at Astros batters this season in retaliation.

Hello Los Angeles Dodgers.

If you are a public relations agent tasked with rebooting the Astros image what would you do?

Would you perform a do-over or at least an addendum to the apology?

Or would you just let it ride and see what happens?

In the peak days of legacy media such as powerful metropolitan daily newspapers, players, owners and celebrity figures would take out full page advertisements to apologize and correct wrongdoing they were accused of.

They asked for forgiveness and practically all the time were eventually forgiven or at least permitted to resume their careers in a more aggrandizing spotlight.

Hello Alex Rodriguez.

It’s a different time now for newspapers.

They are dying and no longer are effective vehicles to deliver these kinds of mea culpas.

Twitter comes to mind as a way of apologizing in modern times.

But Twitter does not have the permanence that a full page letter of apology in the N.Y. Daily News once did.

On Twitter, you can take down the post at any time. Newspaper print in an enclosed glass case in Cooperstown, N.Y., however, is forever.

These are the times we live in.

Most Astros fans are hoping the five-minute attention span that substitutes for news cycles will be their best friend regarding this blowing over entirely and expeditiously.

Since my most recent Super Bowl prediction failed, I am hesitant to predict how long the ire towards the Houston Astros organization will linger.

Learning from your mistakes

Other professional organizations, businesses, companies, and sports teams should take note of this trespass and file it under lesson learned.

But I believe the majority of them will not.

In the name of keeping a competitive edge in sports, cheating has been common throughout its history.

Whether it’s taking banned substances or stealing signs, instead of resisting the temptation to break the rules and remain within the constraints of fair play, individuals demonstrate their human frailties, surrender to ego and take the less savory approach that is cheating in the name of victory.

The problem is exacerbated when teams are involved.

The Houston Astros baseball team was caught in the act of cheating and failed miserably at making amends.

They refused to accept responsibility from the top down.

Jim Crane’s recent press conference reeked of arrogance and the effectiveness of the individual Astro players’ apologies fared no better in terms of hastening forgiveness.

Put together, these two critical operational errors will contribute to season-long scrutiny by Houston Astros’ faithful and foes alike while also serving as a classic example of damage control gone awry in the digital age.