Justice finds a way

Which is not exactly what Jeff Goldblum said in "Jurassic Park." But you get the idea.

You get the idea because a man named Bob Bertoni out in western Pennsylvania found a way where Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred did not, which suggests the wrong one of the two is in the Big Chair. What Bertoni did was decide that in his little corner of baseball, they were going to have no truck with cheaters. And so Bertoni, the head of District 16/31 Little League, decreed that none of the teams in the 23 Little Leagues he oversees will be named "Astros."

This is on account of the Houston Asterisk-os cheating their glutes off to win the 2017 World Series, and a whole pile of games in 2017 and 2018 besides. Calling your Little League team the "Astros," therefore, violates the Little League pledge, according to Bertoni. And that's because part of the pledge reads "I will play fair and strive to win."

The Asterisk-os did the latter while ignoring the former, of course. And except for their manager and general manager, they got away with it.

None of the players involved in the Asterisk-os' sign-stealing scheme were so much as suspended by the commish, essentially because he would have had to fight the players' union to do so. Or to put it more bluntly: He didn't punish the players because it would be too hard.

This does not exactly cast Manfred as the second coming of Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who famously cast the Black Sox into outer darkness. What the Asterisk-os did was far worse, because it involved the entire organization and went on for at least two years. But Manfred, rather than throw the lot of them out on their ears, granted the players immunity anyway.

This of course makes him less a Mountain than a molehill. And no doubt has the Judge rolling his eyes and muttering to himself out there in the Great Beyond.

And yet: Justice finds a way. It does.

And so the Asterisk-os might want to invest in some body armor, because frontier retribution is coming. If you don't think there are some plunkings in their future from revenge-minded pitchers, you don't know baseball. The players are madder than hornets, and more and more of them are speaking out. And all the warnings in the world won't stop them from doing more than just talking.

The Asterisk-os, naturally, are crying foul over this, casting themselves as victims before the fact. It's the prevailing ethos here in Our Only Available Impeached President's America, where up is down, black is white, and calling out liars and cheaters is seen as persecution.

But there is still such a thing as truth, and here it is: Even if some of the Asterisk-os weren't involved in the cheating, they were still involved. In other words, they went along with it even if they didn't like it. No one in that clubhouse did what a team leader is supposed to do, which is lead. No one stood up and said: "You know, this is cheating and it needs to stop now. Because if it doesn't, I'm going to the commissioner."

Jose Altuve? George Springer? Alex Bregman? Anyone? No one?

Very well, then. Start duckin', boys.