National Pastime Radio: It must be important; I heard it on Wait Wait

You know a current event has gravitas when a pop culture entity like The Daily Show or Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me includes it in its weekly program.

WWDTM referred to the recent computer hacking “scandal” by the St. Louis Cardinals in their most recent episode:

PETER SAGAL: All right, here, sir, is your last quote.

BILL KURTIS: Everyone involved seems to be an idiot.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That could be said about so many things. But it was a headline from Deadspin about the hacking scandal in what sport?

GUEST: Baseball?

SAGAL: Baseball, yes.

(APPLAUSE)

SAGAL: The FBI is now investigating the St. Louis Cardinals for cybercrime. Apparently, Cardinals employees hacked into a Houston Astros executive’s computer to steal all kinds of sensitive baseball secrets. You know, secrets like hit ’em where they ain’t. And come on, batter-batter, swing.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: It’s baseball.

LUKE BURBANK: We want a pitcher, not a belly-itcher.

SAGAL: Exactly. That was – that was…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: That kind of information can really turn your season around. You know, spies in baseball are very strange. My name is Bonds, Barry Bonds. I don’t see it.

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: And we don’t – I mean, this is such a dumb thing to do. They left such a trail of evidence behind. It was easily – too easy to find out who had done it and why. And, you know, why did they do it? They were probably just watching a baseball game and they got bored, so…

(LAUGHTER)

SAGAL: Screwing around on the Internet, who hasn’t done that?

BURBANK: Who hasn’t committed a federal offense…

SAGAL: Yeah.

BURBANK: …Because the seventh inning is taking too long?

Aside from the simple illegality of it, I agree with Sagal. It’s not like stealing credit card information (unless that was included in the data). I mean, we’re talking baseball here. Not national defense, not the Colonel’s secret recipe. Also, if each team is doing its job, shouldn’t they pretty much all have the same scouting reports, etc.?

The New York Times ran this article by Michael Schmidt, basically saying the FBI would be difficult to identify the individual who hacked into the Houston Astros system. Really? They solve this stuff in an hour on TV.

Since I’m always curious about the deconstruction of things, especially when it comes to a market reporting on problems within its purview, here’s a piece by Dan Caesar, who writes the Media View column for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on how the initial story was covered by print and broadcast outlets across the country. A few selected quotes describing the impact of the act:

• “If this is true, this would be a scandal of epic proportion. It’s bigger than anything. It’s bigger than ‘Spygate.’”
• “blockbuster”
• “The so-called Best Fans In Baseball are supporting a team that may have the Worst Employee In Baseball.”
• “There’s certainly something to be said for a scandal like this taking down a self-righteous and, at times, delusional fan base a peg or two.”
• “What makes the St. Louis Cardinals hacking scandal really great, aside from the fact that it involves the St. Louis Cardinals, is that it could not have happened if everyone involved hadn’t acted as stupidly as possible.”
• “In theory if there’s a motivation to do this to a competitor in sports, then there’s a motivation for another network to do it to NBC,” Bob Costas said. “There’s a motivation for any competitor to do it to his or her competitors.”