FRONTLINE examines the Houston Astros cheating scandal and what it says about baseball today. With reporter Ben Reiter, the documentary traces the making of one of the best teams and worst scandals in modern Major League Baseball history, the limited accountability and how the Astros’ approach to baseball changed the sport.
PBS affiliate KPBS offers a bit more about the doc.
Gripping and revealing, the documentary features new and exclusive interviews with former MLB insiders — including a former Astros video operations manager who speaks out for the first time and details the inner workings of the now-infamous sign-stealing scheme, and the most expansive on-camera interview yet with former Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, who continues to deny awareness of the cheating.
The film is narrated by producer and reporter Ben Reiter, who has covered the team extensively for Sports Illustrated, in the book “Astroball,” and in the podcast, The Edge: Houston Astros. In the documentary, Reiter goes inside the Astros’ journey from the worst team in baseball to the most dominant club of the era, chronicling how their innovative and hypercompetitive approach — data-driven and drawn from Wall Street and Silicon Valley — took shape and changed the game.
Then, Reiter probes that approach’s shadow side, piecing together how a “win-at-all-costs” culture inside the Astros led to a cheating scheme that would taint the team’s 2017 World Series win and reverberate across the sports world. Drawing on new interviews and reporting, the documentary examines MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s own investigation into the scandal, which offered immunity to Astros players and resulted in few consequences for those who carried out the cheating scheme.
To me, this seems like it is way out of the scope of Frontline‘s usual topics. Just look at the upcoming episodes in the fall: Putin, Elon Musk, Mitch McConnell, Uvalde, Mariupol…and the Houston Astros? Sure, all of these topics have exactly the same level of seriousness.
Additionally, I feel like the Astros scandal is played out. Reiter’s podcast series was released three years ago. A series was planned for Quibi in 2020, though the company’s implosion likely put an end to that one (we can’t find any record of it being released anywhere). The Athletic dove deep into the sign-stealing in 2019, and Evan Drellich (who co-wrote that article) released a book about it earlier this year.
After this edition of Frontline, maybe it’s time to move on from the deep dives into the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. At this point, it’s probably been covered as thoroughly as it could be.
Frontline: the Astros Edge premieres Tuesday, October 3 at 10 p.m. ET on PBS and YouTube.
[PBS]
