A BITTER END

Hoffman presents an ironic twist to the shocking Astros firings of A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow

Hoffman presents an ironic twist to the shocking Astros firings of A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow
Photo by Jason Behnken / Getty Images

This article originally appeared on CultureMap.

You like irony? In 2015, the Positive Coaching Alliance asked if I'd interview and write a column about the guest speaker at its annual fundraiser. The Positive Coaching Alliance promotes good sportsmanship in youth sports. Its mission statement is, "Play by the rules, honor the sport."

The guest speaker? A.J. Hinch, the Houston Astros manager first suspended for a year by Major League Baseball, then fired forever by team owner Jim Crane for his role in the Astros' sign-stealing cheating scandal.

I am sad to see Hinch go. He seemed like a good guy and the perfect manager for the lovable Astros. Obviously, he was involved enough in the skullduggery to warrant a suspension and Crane is right to clear house, including dismissing Hinch. The Astros need to be a clean machine.

General manager Jeff Luhnow, I never cared for. He always struck me as a skunk and bit of a nut job. I once corrected his spelling on Twitter and he didn't see the humor in that.

Then I saw him wearing flip-flops at Fuddruckers and I saw nothing funny about that. I've got a thing about feet and food.

There's cheating...and then there's cheating
But cheating is a weird thing. There's cheating...and then there's cheating. As a Little League manager, I was a member of the Positive Coaching Alliance. One time, the local PCA rep asked if I thought "framing" a pitch was cheating.

Framing a pitch is when the catcher moves his glove slightly after catching a pitch so the umpire is more likely to call the pitch a strike. I said it wasn't cheating, every big league catcher does it on TV. It's part of the game. The PCA rep said it absolutely was cheating and I should tell my catcher not to do it. I told him, I'm lucky if my pitcher can reach home plate, and if he does it's unlikely my catcher will catch the ball. Next subject.

I didn't grow up in Houston, so my life will go on without Hinch and Luhnow fired. I remember comedian Robert Klein telling how he worshipped the New York Yankees when he was a kid growing up in The Bronx. He lived and died with the Yankees. He celebrated each win, mourned each loss. Then he became a celebrity and was invited into the Yankee clubhouse. During his visit, he saw Yogi Berra emerging from the shower. From that day on, he was OK with the Yankees losing a game.

My kid and his friends did grow up here. They're devastated by the news that Hinch has been fired as Astros manager. They all played baseball through Little League and high school and some beyond. One of them told me, "We stole signs on every level." In Little League, managers in the third base coach's box often could see the opponent's catcher stick down one finger for a fast ball, two fingers for a curve. If the coach saw one finger, he'd yell to the batter, "C'mon, Johnny." If the coach saw two fingers, he'd holler, "C'mon number 5!" Not exactly Navajo code talkers, but the batter was 12 years old.

If a tournament had a strict 90-minute time limit, coaches would tell their batters to stall, tie their shoelaces, call time out, adjust their batting gloves. Catchers were told to visit the mound and recite the Gettysburg Address. There's a company that will take a metal bat and practically turn it into a rocket launcher by hardening the metal or shaving the inside to make it lighter. I've seen parents let their hotshot kid pitch six innings for one team in the morning, then another six innings for a different team that afternoon. That's sick and more than a little dangerous and possibly rising to child abuse.

Continue on CultureMap to read about the distinction between theatrics and cheating.

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Houston defeats TCU, 60-45. Photo by Chris Gardner/Getty Images.

Kelvin Sampson knows how to win a Big 12 Tournament, leading Oklahoma to three straight titles in the early 2000s.

He has Houston two wins away from its own.

The Cougars ramped up their suffocating defense on TCU, Emanuel Sharp had 14 points and Big 12 player of the year Jamal Shead scored 12, and the No. 1 team in the nation rolled to a 60-45 victory on Thursday in the quarterfinal round of its first tournament in its new league.

“They're all good. All the teams are really good,” said Sampson, whose team was beaten soundly on the boards by the bigger Horned Frogs yet still won with ease. “You win by 15, you move on to the next one, man.”

In this case No. 25 Texas Tech, which romped to a victory over No. 20 BYU earlier in the day.

“Texas Tech is good enough to beat us,” Sampson said. “We're going to have to play a lot better than we did today.”

Hard to imagine it on the defensive end, where the No. 1 seed Cougars (29-3) held eighth-seeded TCU without a point for nearly 10 minutes to start the game and was never threatened the rest of the way in winning its 10th consecutive game.

Micah Peavy had 13 points and 11 rebounds to lead the Horned Frogs (21-12). Leading scorer Emanuel Miller followed up his 26-point performance in a second-round win over Oklahoma by scoring just three points on 1-for-10 shooting.

TCU wound up going 17 of 73 from the field (23.3%) and 2 of 20 from beyond the 3-point arc.

“It wasn't our day to make shots,” Horned Frogs coach Jamie Dixon said. “I don't know how many were tough shots. I thought there were layups, we had a couple of kickout 3s off rebounds. It's probably something to do with them, because you can't take away from what they've done game after game. Their numbers are off the charts.”

Longtime rivals in the old Southwest Conference, the Cougars and Horned Frogs were meeting for the first time in the Big 12 Tournament — otherwise known as a neutral floor, where Houston had never lost in eight other games with TCU.

The Cougars never left a doubt that it would be nine.

Fresh off a 30-point blowout of Kansas, the regular-season Big 12 champs scored the first 16 points of the game, shutting down Dixon's team with the kind of in-your-shorts defense that has become the Cougars' hallmark over the years.

TCU missed its first 16 field-goal attempts and did not score until Peavy's bucket with 10:25 left in the first half.

“That's a whole other level of not making shots,” Dixon said.

Even when Houston went through its own offensive dry spell in the first half, it continually hounded the Horned Frogs. They were 3 for 23 with six turnovers at one point, and during one possession, they missed four consecutive shots at the rim.

TCU trailed 31-15 at halftime, missed its first eight shots of the second half and never threatened the rest of the way.

“The past four years I've been here,” Shead said, “we've approached every game the same. We said at the beginning of the year the Big 12 was a lot harder competition at a consistent level, but our preparation is usually the same. It's just about going out there and executing what we work on.”

UP NEXT

TCU should be safely in the NCAA Tournament field for the third consecutive year.

Houston routed the Red Raiders 77-54 in January, when Shead poured in 29 points in the win.

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