Astros and Asterisks

Jonathan Silverman is a professor of English at UMass Lowell. He is the coauthor of Johnny Cash International: How and Why Fans Love the Man in Black and author of Nine Choices: Johnny Cash and American Culture.

• Acknowledgments Introduction Timeline Part I. Histories of Cheating in Baseball Chapter 1. Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Cheating: Blame It on the Pitchers (Steven Gietschier) Chapter 2. Cheating versus Gamesmanship: Ethical Relativism in Baseball? (George Gmelch) Chapter 3. "This Is Not a Cultural Issue": The Astros' (and Baseball's) Willingness to Overlook Domestic Violence (Katherine Murray) Chapter 4. Round Up the Usual Suspects: Cheating in Baseball (Richard Crepeau) Part II. The Scandal Unfolds Chapter 5. Finally, a Fun Baseball Scandal (Will Leitch) Chapter 6. What Is the Sound of One Bat Slapping? Reading the Houston Astros' Trash Can (Roberta Newman) Chapter 7. Blame Is a Tangled Mess in Astros Sign-Stealing Scandal (Evan Drellich) Part III. Fans and the Scandal Chapter 8. Interview with a Bang Counter: A Q&A with Tony Adams ( Chapter 9. Reckoning with Tainted Love: What the Astros Scandal Reveals of Sports Fandom (Matthew Klugman) Chapter 10. "To Learn Baseball": A Transatlantic Dialogue on the Astros and the American Ways of Winning (Michael Hinds and Joseph Rivera) Part IV. The Scandal and Its Ethical Dilemmas Chapter 11. Baseball Has No Love for Truth Tellers (Mitchell Nathanson) Chapter 12. Bad Apples or Bad Astros? Collective Responsibility and the Perils of Team Loyalty (Erin Tarver) Chapter 13. From Protector to Whistleblower: Being a "Good" Teammate When Cheating Occurs (Allison R. Levin and Matthew Staker) Part V. Technology and the Scandal Chapter 14. Stealing Signs: Technology, Surveillance and Policing inside and outside the Game (Dain TePoel and Eileen Narcotta-Welp) Chapter 15. The Spreadsheet in the Garden: Analytics and the Sign-Stealing Scandal (Jonathan Silverman) Appendix: "Defendant Houston Astros": Michael Bolsinger vs. The Houston Astros Contributors Index

This new anthology offers a host of perspectives on the scandal itself and what it reveals about the team and the sport as a whole. It makes for a fascinating read on one of the most revealing moments in professional sports in recent memory. (InsideHook) Despite this volume’s title and primary focus, many of its 15 essays go well beyond specifics of the Houston Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scandal (and gamesmanship/cheating practices in sports in general) . . . In sum the book is an insightful but painful reflection on the conditions of sport and society in late capitalism. (CHOICE) For any learned fan interested in cheating within baseball outside of the PED scandals where deceitful action has been focused the past two decades, this is an important edition . . . [Astros and Asterisks] is a niche work, and it functions quite well in that niche to describe the contexts and contours of the scandal under analysis. Also, many of the chapters offer creative lenses for exploring sports, cheating, and modern ideas of technology and ethics in broader and interesting ways for social studies of sport. (The Journal of Popular Culture) [This is] a wide-ranging edited volume that examines the [Houston Astros sign-stealing] scandal from historical, journalistic, legal, ethical, and cultural perspectives and considers the implications the scandal has for the sport and its future. (Journal of Sport History)