Senator Ben Sasse brought up the Houston Astros' sign-stealing scandal during the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Wednesday.
Sasse, who represents the state of Nebraska, called the Astros “miserable cheaters” during the hearings, prompting a bit of a back-and-forth with Texas senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.
Sasse then referred to the Astros facing elimination in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series on Wednesday, and tried to make an allusion between the “cheating” Astros and the Democrats' purported efforts to stall Coney Barrett's confirmation:
“Tonight is Game 4 in the American League Championship Series and if Houston loses to Tampa, they will be done and that leads people to feel kind of desperate at times, right? There are times where you have a game that is your elimination game, you can imagine people wanting to sort of reconsider anything they can reconsider,” Sasse said, via Matt Young of the Houston Chronicle. “The ends might justify the means. You can imagine that the Houston Astros, who have cheated in lots of ways in the past with sign-stealing, might try to go to the umpire and try to persuade somebody to expand the strike zone just for Houston tonight. That would obviously be inappropriate, right?”
Whether the allusion is successful is up for debate, though it is objectively true the Astros have been vilified by MLB fans.
Revelations of Houston stealing signs during the 2017 championship season is one of the biggest scandals in modern sports history, and the Astros have been exposed to a tremendous amount of backlash.
Houston had entered the playoffs with a losing record, just the third team in MLB history to do so. After a pair of inspired series wins, their season is on the brink as they prepare to face the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday night.
It would seem Sasse is hoping for a Rays victory.
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