Quote of the Week...from José Altuve

 I feel proud to be able to play every day.  That's what makes me really happy.      ---José Altuve

José Altuve is perhaps the most talented and accomplished hitter in baseball today when it comes to pure batting.  He has played for his major league career on the Houston Astros, a team that has won the Amercian League pennant four out of the past six seasons and the World Series in 2017.  It was in that year of 2017, however, that the franchise...and players like Altuve...have received much negative attention for its team scandal in which, during home games in their stadium, opposing teams' catchers' signals to their pitchers were secretly filmed and conveyed to Astro batters to give them an unfair advantage, a clear violation of the rules that has tainted them in subsequent years...even up to today as Houston plays Philadelphia in this year's Series.  This sort of cheating scandal isn't new to sports, and instead of going more deeply into it I'd like to discuss what it does to players like Altuve who get stuck in it.  José Altuve is the last player who needs an unfair advantage to prop up his already spectacular batting, and he reportedly was angry whenever the others tried to give him stolen signals.  But whenever there is a conspiracy within an organized group to transgress the rules or law, be it a sports team, the police, a political group, family, just about any workplace, or even an informal social clique, the "Code" comes into play which compels the members to silence in the face of the violations...this doesn't just happen in The Godfather and Goodfellas.  The result is such members find themselves as victims of a no-win situation that they had little-to-no influence in creating.  Either they come clean and report the violations outside the group and be shunned as violating the Code, or they stay true to the Code and get vilified by the outside...such is the situation Altuve and other Astros players like pitching ace Justin Verlander find themselves in.  I am personally very much aware of this disgusting aspect of human social interaction and have many memories going back all the way to my childhood of this type of group abuse of individuals.  It's gotten to the point where I have a strong sense of when something untoward is going on around me, causing me to instinctively withdraw as much as possible from contact with those I believe are centrally involved.  And I can tell among a group that certain of them are up to no good...even when I am not privy to any specific information.  People-lovers will say I'm paranoid...no, I'm just experienced and wary.  As for Mr. Altuve, I say don't worry, my friend, be happy and play...