by Jason Snell
Stealing signs? Try hacking databases
The New York Times reports that St. Louis Cardinals officials may have hacked into the player research database of the Houston Astros:
The attack would represent the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team hacked the network of another team…. Law enforcement officials believe the hacking was executed by vengeful front-office employees for the Cardinals hoping to wreak havoc on the work of Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ general manager who had been a successful and polarizing executive with the Cardinals until 2011.
If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying, I guess… but at least deflating a few footballs isn’t a federal offense.
[Update: A nice take on the story from FiveThirtyEight.]