Evan Drellich - Winning Fixes Everything

THERE WAS PROBABLY A BETTER USE OF MY TIME THAN TRUDGING UP AND down the long stairs of the converted schoolhouse I lived in for yet another cigarette in the Boston cold, but I needed to escape somewhere. It was February 2019, and I had just been fired. My reporting future was uncertain, my bank account was dwindling, and I was gaining weight rapidly. Every day, I was left to wonder whether Id passed on the biggest story of my life.

A few months earlier, in October 2018, I was a Red Sox beat writer. In the penultimate round of the Major League Baseball postseason, the Sox were coincidentally playing the Houston Astros, a team I had once covered. The Astros at this point were the defending World Series champions, after winning the first title in franchise history in 2017.

There was one massive problem, I learned during that 2018 postseason. Sitting in a hotel room within walking distance of the Astros stadium, I spoke with people who had firsthand knowledge of how the Astros had cheated in that championship season. These were not sources on the outside pointing fingers, but people who knewwho had lived it.

I learned how the Astros used a camera in center field to zoom in on the signs the catcher flashed the pitcher before the pitch. How the Astros had set up a television monitor near their dugout, where the players sit during games, to be able to see that video feed, and how they brazenly banged on a garbage can with a baseball bat and other devices to communicate what they gleaned from that screen. It was an advantage, many players felt, to know what was coming, be it a straight fastball or a bending curveball. And to use technology to gain that knowledge was beyond the pale.

This wasnt just one player breaking the rules, either. This was a World Serieswinning team that had collectively cheated, and the public didnt know it.

I was floored. It was a massive story, the kind, frankly, many reporters dream of, and some might even dread. I was confident in everything I had at the outsetindeed, it all proved to be true. But to get a story done, I would need further corroboration.

One Astros source warned of the context of cheating in the sport, an encouragement that in hindsight could have both been earnest, but also self-serving, meant to deflect attention away from what the Astros had done. Nonetheless, I wanted to learn for myself and include it in my reportingin what environment did this behavior arise?

During batting practice before one of the Red SoxAstros playoff games at Houstons Minute Maid Park in 2018, Houstons general manager, Jeff Luhnow, stood near the top step of the Astros dugout. He was the architect of the team, and I tried to get his attention as he was walking away from me. You wont find anything, he said defensively, making clear he wouldnt talk to me.

Luhnow quickly disappeared down the dugout steps into the tunnel, walking, ironically, right into the area where I had just learned the team had conducted its cheating.

On the night the Red Sox won that series in Houston, eliminating the Astros, I shot my television spots on the dimly lit, empty field. The Astros dugout, on the first-base side, was a short distance away. Down a few steps to the tunnel I went, to a short but wide corridor that leads to the locker room. I wanted to check out the scene of the prior years crime for myself.

There was the garbage can, near to the wall on my right, and an empty space with wires hanging nearby indicated where a TV had once beenexactly as the setup had been described to me. I took a few photos, hoping someday one would accompany a story.

The Red Sox had moved on to the World Series, where they faced the Los Angeles Dodgers. I met with a pair of MLB officials at Dodger Stadium, trying to understand what MLB was undertaking to combat electronic sign-stealing. I told them I had multiple accounts of the Astros stealing signs via electronic means in the prior year.

I think that every club is always suspicious, but again one official said.

I cut the official off: This is from within the Astros.

Within the Astros, theyre acknowledging that theyve done this? one shot back, surprised.

Yes.

They have acknowledged that? one said. I mean, I cant speak to that. I mean, to our knowledgeyou have your information, and we have ours, and thats all we can go off. As to whether that has occurred, to our knowledge we are completely unaware. I am confident in the measures that weve taken.

I was curious how seriously the league would treat the matter and was told it would ultimately be up to Commissioner Rob Manfred. I wasnt contacting the league attempting to steer its own investigative work, to be a friendly tipster. Rather, were MLB looking deeper into the Astros cheating, and I could ascertain as much, then I might have an entre to a story sooner rather than later.

It was one of a handful of brief communications I had in 2018 with baseballs central office over what I understood had happened.

If you can tell your sources that they shouldif they want to speak to the commissioners office, were all ears, a different official told me once the World Series ended. The problem is, nobody talks to us.

Of course, no such redirection would take place. Its not a reporters job to steer sources to the league. But it was clear to me the league was not of a mind to act.

As the offseason began, I was leery of publishing what I had learned about the Astros to that point. For one, none of my sources were on the record, and if the story was going to be based solely on unnamed sources, I wanted more than I had at the time. I also knew that finding someone to go on the record about cheating might be impossible, but I still wanted to see if that person was out there.

I also considered how the story would be received, and, frankly, whether it would be believed. I was no longer in Houston, but covering a rival team in Boston. The Astros, I knew well, were aggressive with the media, and I suspected they would do everything in their power to attack me and my reporting.

During my time covering the Astros, from late 2013 into 2016, they were a controversial franchise. I reported on questions about their management culture and decision-making with the support of my newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, which was the only outlet in the city that covered the team on the road and was not also owned by the team.

The Astros had tried to bully me into submission. In 2015, the owner of the team and the head spokesperson attempted to remove me from the beat in a meeting with a pair of Chronicle editors simply because they didnt like my coverage. Thankfully, my editors stood by me.

Now, the truth is the truth, and years later, I wasnt going to back away from reporting on the Astros cheating for fear of receptionnot alone. But there was one other major wrinkle. I didnt think the outlet I was working for at the time was equipped to support this reporting.

This was not a major newspaper with the backbone and support staff for a major investigation. I was working for a TV station whose primary reason for existence was televising Boston Celtics basketball games and reacting to sports-talk radio.

I took the conservative route, and really, the only route I could: to keep reporting. I wrote a general piece on electronic sign-stealing in November 2018.

Very quickly, my doubts about the support I had at NBC Sports Boston proved correct. When they fired me in February 2019, I was blindsided, but perhaps I shouldnt have been.