Abstract
The Houston Astros won the Major League Baseball World Series on November 2, 2017. Their fans, news organizations and retailers took to social media to express their views on the Astros’ win. After an intense investigation, Major League Baseball commissioner Robert Manfred announced the league concluded the Astros had cheated in order to win the World Series. Once again, people shared their opinions on social media, specifically twitter. Manfred’s announcement also included the Astro’s punishments. This study contextually analyzed the tweets on November 2, 2017, and January 13, 2020, posted by the people in the Houston area that also contained the keyword “Astros” to examine the changes in public opinion surrounding the team.
The Houston Astros used a live stream to steal the opponent’s signs used to call pitches and then created a system to convey that sign to the batter, by banging on a trash can. Sign stealing has always been a part of baseball. However, Major League Baseball prohibits the use of technology to steal signs. After Major League Baseball commissioner, Robert Manfred, revealed the investigation and punishments, the Astros’ owner, Jim Crane, decided to fire their manager and their general manager in response. Although sign stealing is common, people have never reacted well to it. Jim Crane claimed he did not know about the cheating until the story broke. It is common knowledge that sports fans do not like teams that cheat; however, fans are also fiercely loyal. The firing of higher-level Astros personnel was an attempt to take responsibility for the cheating. However, the cheating ended several opponent’s pitching careers. The impact of the Astros’ cheating did not only influence the outcome of the World Series; it affected individual players and Major League Baseball as a whole. The public relations team had a massive problem. The public opinion on twitter left them very little room to influence the conversation. Most sports fans consider cheating to be one of the worst things a team can do. This study contextually analyzes the tweets that contained the keyword “Astros” made in the Houston area on November 2, 2017, and January 13, 2020, in an attempt to understand the change in public opinion surrounding the Astros. The social media platform was chosen because Twitter was used most by sports fans and had the most posts about the Astros on these two days. The purpose of this study is to examine the publics’ thoughts on cheating and their perception of the Astros after the scandal.
Literature Review
The information available around cheating in Major League Baseball focusses on steroid use and intentionally changing the outcome of the game. However, cheating and dishonesty are seen as league issues and not only a team issue. When one team is caught cheating, it jeopardizes the image of the entire league, even the teams with a spotless record. The increase in cheating has caused some fans to stop watching Major League Baseball all together. They either choose to watch a different sport or watch college baseball (Dowd, 2020). The decrease in viewership leads the league to offer harsher punishments when teams are caught cheating. However, since teams are not often publicly punished, the league could be handling cases behind closed doors when the public was not aware of them.
While Dowd viewed cheating as a league-wide issue, Kamis et al. (2016) viewed cheating as an individual issue. Cheating from youth sports to the big leagues in any sports is typically a psychodynamic issue. A significant factor in the willingness of an athlete to cheat is their gender. They found that most cases of cheating were in male sports and that females have higher moral reasoning scores than males. They suggest that the best way to prevent cheating in any sport is to ensure the coach is against cheating and that the coach expresses that to their athletes. The home environment of the athlete also matters. If their parental figure is against cheating, then they most likely will be too. The Astros general manager and manager were both aware of the cheating and did not put a stop to it. Most of the Astros live with other Astros or close to them.
Tony Adams, a Houston Astros fan, watched 8, 274 pitches at 58 Astros home games. Adams gathered the data because he was in denial of the fact that the Astros were cheating when they won the World Series (Adams, 2020). He listened to a lot of trash can bangs to confirm what Robert Manfred had already confirmed, the Astros were cheaters. He heard trash can banging before 1,134 pitches. He only used home game footage because the video was not available for most of the away games. Hurricane Harvey decreased the number of home games the Astros played. Adams also recorded the banging by batter so that people can see which batters were cheated for the most. The Astros limited using the trash can cheating system to only their weaker batters against the best teams, probably in an effort to avoid being caught. Adams’ evidence caused some dedicated fans to claim that the Astros were still deserving of the title because they only cheated 13.8 percent of the time (Diamond, 2020).
Cheating has been a part of Major League Baseball for a long time in different forms. Steroid use used to be a prominent issue in Major League Baseball. In 2004, President George Bush condemned the use of performance-enhancing drugs in his state of the union address. People were confused about the juxtaposition of steroid use in professional sports and the war on terror. However, farther examination saw the steroid comment as an attempt to “purify” the United States, which fit with Bush’s broader rhetoric about a post 9-11 America (Butterworth, 2008). Shortly after the State of the Union Address, Major League Baseball suspended Rafael Palmeiro for steroid use. Palmeiro was suspended for ten days after he lied in a congressional hearing. He vehemently denied using steroids, then tested positive, which resulted in his suspension. He later became a scapegoat for Major League Baseball because it proved they were working toward a performance-enhancing drug policy. Major League Baseball did not investigate the Astros for the use of steroids; however, team punishments for cheating are similar regardless of the method (Tynes, 2006).
None of the existing scholarly information examines the public’s opinion on teams that were caught and punished for cheating. Dowd argued that cheating affects the league as a whole but did not provide evidence to support his claims. Most enthusiastic baseball fans use Twitter to express their opinions, especially on events that make national news like a new World Series Champion or a cheating scandal.
R1: How did the public opinion of the Astros change on Twitter when they were caught cheating?
Method
Tweets made on the day the Astros won the World Series and the day that Major League Baseball Commissioner announced that the Astros had been cheating during the 2017 season were contextually analyzed to identify themes and changes in public opinion (Major League Baseball, 2020). November 2, 2017, was the day the Astros won the World Series, and January 13, 2020, was the day the MLB commissioner announced the Astros were cheating. Twitter was selected as the primary social media platform because there was an overwhelming number of posts on the major platforms, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and Twitter was the most popular among sports fans. The posts were limited again by a key phrase, “The Astros,” the date, and limited geographically to include Houston and its surrounding areas. The dates were chosen due to their newsworthiness. The geographic area was limited to the Houston area because the Astros are their home team, and most people from Houston were intensely aware of these events. These were used as search factors to narrow the data to a more manageable amount.
The tweets from each date were printed and then sorted into positive and negative Astro perception stacks. Each date was contextually analyzed independently so that the two dates content could be compared. These stacks were then organized into different themes which included, positive opinions of the Astros, negative opinions of the Astros, brand endorsements, news, Deshaun Watson, Houston Astros Day and the Astros should have been punished more harshly. The content found in the November 2017 tweets was examined in comparison to the January 2020 date in an attempt to examine the difference, if there was one, in the public’s opinion of the Houston Astros. The comparison focused on positive or negative opinion themes from Houston fans found in the contextual analysis.
Analysis
The tweets that met the keyword, geographical and time criteria were printed and then sorted into stacks with other similar tweets. Each date’s data was sorted separately so that they could be analyzed for opinions and then compared. The five themes the November 2, 2017 tweets were coded into were news, Deshaun Watson tore his ACL, brand endorsements, Houston Astros Day, positive sentiments about the Astros and negative sentiments about the Astros. Overall there were more positive tweets about the Astros than negative ones. The positive tweets were also extremely positive, “Let’s raise a glass to the Houston Astros for winning their first World Series Championship in franchise history! #EarnedHistory.” #EarnedHistory was a common hashtag used in tweets about the Astros on November 2, 2017. The negative tweets were limited, and their content was not completely negative. One of the only negative tweets said, “Good afternoon to everybody except the entire Houston Astros organization,” which does not give a reason for disliking the Astros. Most of the negative tweets are vague about the reasons that they do not support the Astros.
However, on January 13, 2020, the day that Manfred announced that the Astros were cheaters, Twitter changed quickly. Almost all of the tweets about the Astros were negative. There were fewer themes identified from the January 13, 2020 data. The themes were, the Astros can cheat but not this other team that was punished worse, negative tweets, the cheating did not cause the Astros to win and news tweets. Even the tweets that stated the Astros still won were not totally supportive of the team, “2017 WORLD SERIES CHAMPS… THE HOUSTON ASTROS. Can’t take that away from the city.” The tweet says “the city” not “the Astros” but the city of Houston. The negative tweets contained almost no positive input even though they were from people in the Houston area. “A dark day in #MLB history: Houston #Astros ‘ cheating scandal taints baseball, ruins club’s legacy,” was among the most negative tweets because it approaches how the cheating affected the entire game of baseball. The idea that the club’s legacy was ruined is also negative. It states that the Houston Astros will not ever be the same even after the league punished them. The fans also speculated why the Astros cheated and argued that they should have their title taken away, “Teams cheat because they want to gain an edge to increase their chances of winning. So punish them at the source. STRIP the Houston Astros of the 2017 World Series championship. There’s no 1994 World Champion. Why does there have to be a 2017 World Champion?” There was not a 1994 World Series Champion because the players went on strike because Major League Baseball proposed a salary cap that the players opposed.
The cheating being announced on national television created a shift in opinion from the time the Astros won the World series. The excitement of both of these events caused many people to tweet about them. The emotional attachment that most baseball fans have to America’s past time causes some people to respect the players. When the Astros were caught cheating, it caused many people to feel like they had been lied to, especially after they had been calling the World Series win, “#EarnedHistory” on Twitter. There was a general shift from tweeting mostly positive things about the Astros to almost entirely negative tweets. This shift occurred quickly, and the content of the tweets changed from positive, with no negative sentiments to negative tweets with no positive thoughts included. There were a handful of people that believed the Astros still deserved the win, but they were met with lots of backlash in the comments section. Most fans agreed that The Astros deserved harsher punishments and should not be considered the 2017 World Series Champions because the outcome might have been different if they had not cheated. The only tweet from January 13, 2020, that was met with positive feedback came from Major League baseball, “In order to make sure the Astros no longer cheat, MLB is cleaning house and hiring our own front office staff for the Astros. We are taking Rockies GM Jeff Bridich and making him the General Manager of the Houston Astros, effective immediately.” This tweet was met with positive feedback with one fan quote tweeting it, “Wow! Thank god! RT.” These tweets were not in support of the Astros, but in support of the punishments they were receiving from Major League Baseball.
Discussion
The shift in the opinions found in the tweets from November 2, 2017, and January 13, 2020, was profound. The day of the World Series win the tweets contained almost exclusively enthusiastic and positive content. However, on January 13, 2020, everything changed. The Astros cheating scandal was never seen in a positive light. The fans cheered Major League baseball for punishing the organization and replacing their front staff themselves to keep them from cheating. The tweets contained almost exclusively negative content. The public’s opinion shifted from being almost completely positive to the opposite with very little support from the Astros home city. While some fans were in complete disbelief, most of the Astros fans believed the commissioner and were angry at the team for winning the World Series by cheating. The public relations team for the Houston Astros spoke very little on the subject and did not tweet at all on January 13, 2020. It may not have made any difference, but an apology from the organization might have influenced some people to refrain from tweeting, or it could have caused even more people to tweet negatively about the organization. The lack of a response from the Astros may have contributed to the number of tweets posted by fans because they were looking for answers, which they did not find on Twitter.
These findings show that Major League Baseball fans think cheating is almost unforgivable. The Astros home city did not support them or their decision to cheat despite the revenue that the win created for Houston (Rosenthal & Drellich, 2020). Even the die-hard fans did not support their decision to cheat; they just stated the Astros were still the 2017 World Series Champions. The fans also considered the lasting effects the Astros caused to other teams. Several pitchers that performed poorly because of the batters’ ability to know which pitch was coming lost their place in Major League Baseball. The players rely on their performance to keep their jobs. Sign stealing threatens pitchers’ careers, which led some of them to change their signs constantly like Al Leiter, a pitcher for the New York Mets (Red, 2020). On Aug. 4, the Astros beat the Toronto Blue Jays 16-7; there were 54 pitches with banging present. Mike Bolsinger, a Blue Jays pitcher, allowed four earned runs in a third of an inning and never pitched in the MLB again. Cesar Valdez gave up six earned runs in the same game and also has not pitched since (Axisa, 2020). The fans tweeted with no consideration for the Astros’ feeling because of the magnitude the effects of the cheating had on Major League Baseball.
The study only focused on the content found in the tweets, which was supplemented with secondary information provided mostly from news sites. The study did not triangulate the data in any way. Also, more data could have been added to the context analysis since the cheating scandal was a national event. The criteria used to narrow the pool of tweets was necessary because it allowed adequate time to code all of the tweets, but it could have narrowed the pool of information too much. The geographical constraint put on the tweets also limited the tweets to include only the greater Houston area, which could have provided biased information since Houston is the home of the Astros and the location of the Astros field and facilities. More Houston Astros fans live in Houston than anywhere else in the country. However, their unwillingness to defend their team does provide insight into how the rest of the nation viewed the scandal as well. If Houston would not defend the Astros, then no one else would either.
Conclusion and future research
The Houston Astros were loved by most of Houston for winning the World Series Championship in 2017 and hated by most of Houston for being caught cheating to win in 2020. The national scandal put Houston in the spotlight for an incredibly negative reason, and the Astros’ fans went to Twitter to express their negative opinions of the team. Most of Houston expressed a sense of pride in their tweets from November 2, 2017. They expressed disappointment and dissent on January 13, 2020. The tweets from Houston were excited the Astros won, but when the scandal was discovered, they were angry and disappointed that their team brought negative attention to Houston, Texas.
The study could have been improved by interviewing the people whose tweets were used in the contextual analysis about the reasoning behind their tweets. Some of this study relied on speculation about word choice that the tweeter may not have consciously considered. The interviews would have provided valuable context that cannot usually be detected in tweets, like sarcasm. Also, the interviews would have revealed information about tweets that contained emojis and the reasoning behind the choice to use them and the emojis they used. An extension of this study could include the purpose behind each tweet and not only the contents of the tweets.
References
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