Halfway through Game 7 of the American League Championship Series between the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays, I finally, finally<\/em> got the chance to sit down and watch some baseball. At the time, Seattle led. But I didn\u2019t care who wound up winning\u2014I\u2019d be rooting for the winner of this game in the World Series as there is no possible way you\u2019ll find me cheering on the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Almost as soon as I turned on the game, Cal Raleigh, Seattle\u2019s catcher and owner of the\u2014I\u2019m sorry, everyone, but it\u2019s true\u2014dumbest nickname in sports (\u201cBig Dumper\u201d), blasted his fifth home run of the postseason, which was also his 65th (!) of the entire year. That\u2019s impressive! Why don\u2019t we fans include postseason numbers when we tally up all-time numbers? A fleeting thought, perhaps a different column for a different day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Back to the game. The homer upped Seattle\u2019s lead to two through five innings. The Mariners, God bless them, were on the verge of making the World Series for the first time ever. Ever! Even the old Seattle Pilots, who bolted the Pacific Northwest after one year for the cushy confines of\u2026um\u2026Milwaukee has made it to the World Series.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, while I hadn\u2019t watched any of this series before Game 7, I had of course kept an eye on it. And the first six games weren\u2019t exactly thrilling. The Mariners won Game 1 3-1, but Toronto\u2019s offense went missing, collecting only two hits. The next three games, in which Seattle won one and Toronto two, were decided by at least<\/em> six runs. The teams split Games 5 and 6 by the same score: 6-2. Within a slam, sure, but not high drama by any means.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Game 7, then, presented something fresh, as the score remained close heading into the seventh inning. Seattle went down quietly in the top half of the frame before things turned interesting. The Blue Jays\u2019 seventh-place hitter, Addison Barger, walked before Isiah Kiner-Falefa, owner of a .626 OPS, singled up the middle. Ninth-place hitter Andres Gimenez sacrificed them both over, putting the tying run in scoring position with one out and the top of the lineup coming up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Seattle\u2019s manager, Dan Wilson, went to the bullpen at that point, bringing in right-hander Eduard Bazardo, who\u2019d thrown two innings the previous evening.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He promptly gave up a three-run homer to George Springer, which gave the Blue Jays a 4-3 lead, which they never surrendered, and which sent them back to the World Series for the first time since 1993.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n During the game, I\u2019d been texting my buddy who lives in Mississippi. Turns out my feed was five seconds ahead of his, so I waited to text him after Springer sprung (sorry) his attack and launched the ball over the fence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My friend replied, \u201cWas [S]pringer involved in the Astros scandal?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Knowing that my friend meant, \u201cWas Springer on the Astros in 2017?\u201d And knowing the answer, I replied, \u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My friend: \u201cWell $%^& that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Me: \u201cEh. It was eight years ago. I\u2019m over it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The conversation then moved to Springer\u2019s hairstyle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Anyway, the point is, let\u2019s move on from hating players from the 2017 Houston Astros. It\u2019s been long enough. I hated them for a while, but now it\u2019s just tiresome. Good for George Springer, who\u2019s battled injuries throughout his Toronto tenure, but had an excellent 2025. Let\u2019s give the guy a break for something that was almost\u2014gulp<\/em>\u2014a decade ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Now, I\u2019m not saying forgive the Astros organization, because we all need a villain. For Royals fans, though, there\u2019s the whole Carlos Beltran of it all. The banging-on-the-trashcan nonsense cost Beltran not only a managerial job, but to this point, it\u2019s kept him out of the Hall of Fame. That\u2019s ridiculous! It\u2019s time to move on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Back to George Springer and the Mariners. Looking further into things last night, I saw that Seattle fans cheered when Springer got injured on a hit-by-pitch in Game 5. Those same fans booed Springer every time he came up to bat in Seattle. I get the booing part\u2014the Astros, since joining the American League, have shared the AL West with the Mariners, and those fans clearly didn\u2019t forget about 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But booing the man when he gets hurt? Talk about trash. May Springer forever haunt your dreams.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s time to move on. As Royals fans, as Mariners fans, as baseball fans\u2014it\u2019s time to move on and stop hating on the dudes who played for Houston during the 2017 season. Enough\u2019s enough. That World Series title will be forever tainted – it cost damn near everyone involved their reputations, it cost several people their jobs, and it even cost some others their careers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But it\u2019s time to move on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Good on George Springer, who claimed redemption in one of the biggest possible spots the game has to offer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I\u2019ll be rooting for him in the World Series.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.royalsreview.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Halfway through Game 7 of the American League Championship Series between the Seattle Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays, I finally, finally got the chance to sit down and watch some baseball. At the time, Seattle led. But I didn\u2019t care who wound up winning\u2014I\u2019d be rooting for the winner of this game in the World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2107432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[340874],"class_list":["post-2107431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-royals-editorials-reactions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Its-time-to-move-past-the-2017-Astros-sign-stealing-scandal.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2107431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2107433,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107431\/revisions\/2107433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2107432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2107431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2107431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2107431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}