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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.

For 40 years now, the 1985 World Series between the Kansas City Royals and St. Louis Cardinals has been largely overlooked, save for the enduring notoriety of umpire Don Denkinger’s infamous missed call in Game 6 that helped galvanize a walk-off Royals victory that forced a Game 7, in which the Royals won in a blowout. Seizing upon the imagery of the famed Interstate Highway 70 that connects Kansas City and St. Louis, Interstate ’85 goes beyond “The Call” and recasts the 1985 Series as a unique and deeply compelling chapter in baseball history.
 
In this blend of baseball and cultural history, Garvey defines the “I-70 Showdown Series” not only by the literal highway that links the two teams’ home cities but the individual and collective roads travelled by the players and others who took part in the event, both before the Series began and well after the last cheers faded.
 
In addition to gripping human stories and vivid descriptions of on-field action long overshadowed by Denkinger’s monumental blunder, Garvey’s work captures the provincial spectacle of the “Show-Me Series” throughout the state of Missouri. Featuring 27 new interviews conducted by the author, including with George Brett, Ozzie Smith, Don Denkinger, Bud Black, Andy Van Slyke, Ricky Horton, and Mark Gubicza, Interstate ’85 is baseball history writing at its deepest and most captivating. 
 

The story of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and his White Sox teammates purportedly conspiring with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds has lingered in our collective consciousness for a century. Daniel A. Nathan's wide-ranging history looks at how journalists, historians, novelists, filmmakers, and baseball fans have represented and remembered the scandal. Nathan's reflections on what these different cultural narratives reveal about their creators and eras shape a fascinating study of cultural values, memory, and the ways people make meaning.