Astros and Asterisks : Houston's Sign-Stealing Scandal Explained - Jonathan Silverman

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Astros and Asterisks

Name: Astros and Asterisks
Brand: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
Price: 197.75 AUD
Availability: BackOrder

Houston's Sign-Stealing Scandal Explained

By: Jonathan Silverman (Editor)

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Hardcover | 16 October 2023

At a Glance

Hardcover
280 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5

Hardcover

RRP $208.00

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An in-depth and multiperspectival look at the Astros' sign-stealing scandal and its roots in the culture of baseball fandom.

In 2017 the Houston Astros won their first World Series title, a particularly uplifting victory for the city following Hurricane Harvey. But two years later, the feel-good energy was gone after The Athletic revealed that the Astros had stolen signs from opposing catchers during their championship season, perhaps even during the playoffs and World Series. Their methods were at once high-tech and crude: staff took video of opponents' pitching signals and transmitted the footage in real time to the Astros' dugout, where players banged on trash cans to signal to their teammates at bat which pitches were coming their way. Wry observers labeled them the Asterisks, pointing to the title that no longer seemed so earned.

Astros and Asterisks examines the scandal from historical, journalistic, legal, ethical, and cultural perspectives. Authors delve into the Astros' winning-above-all attitude, cultivated by a former McKinsey consultant; the significance of hiring a pitcher recently suspended for domestic abuse; the career-ending effects of the Astros' transgression on opposing players; and the ethically fraught choices necessary to participate in sign-stealing. Ultimately, it links the Astros' choices to the sporting world's obsession with analytics. What emerges is a sobering tale about the impact of new technology on a game whose romanticized image feels increasingly incongruous with its reality in the era of big data and video.

Industry Reviews

This new anthology offers a host of perspectives on the scandal itself and what it reveals about the team and the sport as a whole. It makes for a fascinating read on one of the most revealing moments in professional sports in recent memory. (InsideHook) Despite this volume's title and primary focus, many of its 15 essays go well beyond specifics of the Houston Astros' 2017 sign-stealing scandal (and gamesmanship/cheating practices in sports in general) . . . In sum the book is an insightful but painful reflection on the conditions of sport and society in late capitalism. (CHOICE) For any learned fan interested in cheating within baseball outside of the PED scandals where deceitful action has been focused the past two decades, this is an important edition . . . [Astros and Asterisks] is a niche work, and it functions quite well in that niche to describe the contexts and contours of the scandal under analysis. Also, many of the chapters offer creative lenses for exploring sports, cheating, and modern ideas of technology and ethics in broader and interesting ways for social studies of sport. (The Journal of Popular Culture) [This is] a wide-ranging edited volume that examines the [Houston Astros sign-stealing] scandal from historical, journalistic, legal, ethical, and cultural perspectives and considers the implications the scandal has for the sport and its future. (Journal of Sport History)

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