Fox News Flash top headlines for April 3
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.
Former Houston Astros catcher Evan Gattis attempted to put the 2017 cheating scandal behind him in an interview Tuesday, acknowledging the team’s misdeeds and unleashing an expletive-laden apology.
Gattis played in 84 games with Houston during their World Series run. He spoke on The Athletic’s “755 is Real” podcast about the scandal months after his former teammate Mike Fiers blew the whistle on the scam the team was running to the same publication.
ASTROS OWNER JIM CRANE BELIEVES HE'S SHIELDED FROM LAWSUITS OVER CHEATING SCANDAL
“I’m not asking for sympathy or anything like that. If our punishment is being hated by everybody forever, just like, whatever,” Gattis said. “I don’t know what should be done, but something had to f–king be done. I do agree with that, big-time. I do think it’s good for baseball that we’re cleaning it up. … And I understand that it’s not f–king good enough to say sorry. I get it.”
The recently retired catcher added: “We didn’t look at our moral compass and say this is right. It was almost like paranoia warfare or something. But what we did was wrong. Don’t get it twisted: It was wrong for the nature of competition, not even just baseball.”
Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch were the only personnel members to be disciplined in the scandal and both lost their jobs because of it. Fiers, as a whistleblower, has caught his share of heat for spilling dugout secrets but Gattis wasn’t mad at the pitcher for it.
BREGMAN BECOMES 7TH ASTROS PLAYER HIT BY PITCH IN 5 GAMES
“He had something to say, so he had to f–king say it and then we had to get punished,” Gattis said. “Because if not, then what? It’d f–king get even more out of control. I mean, it’s a tough subject. Yeah, I think a lot of people feel duped, and I understand that.”
Gattis made clear that not every member of the team was on board with the cheating scheme.
“Some people are f–king mad also on our team. Not mad at people hating us, just mad, like kind of on the fans’ side,” he said. “Not everybody was super happy about the cheating. They were teammates, and maybe they didn’t feel like they were in a position to say anything.
“And they’re living with it right now. I could have said some s—t, I could have done something, but I did not. Definitely not.”
He added that he didn’t know whether there was cheating going on in the postseason, but other players knew what was going on or knew about the rumors about them.
Gattis said he knew things got out of control in 2017.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy we won the World Series,” he said. “It was a great time for Houston, especially after (Hurricane) Harvey. … But once that all fades, now it’s kind of different. That happened and we cheated. You can’t feel that good about it. As I grow up, this is a story now, this is gonna be a story next year, and this going to be a story in a decade and longer.
“I’m trying to come up with something positive out of this, other than now we know. But f—k, MLB punished us — I guess not the players — but everybody’s gonna have to wear the boos and all that s—t and be a punching bag, I get it. I understand why you’re mad.”
Before MLB suspended its season due to the coronavirus, Astros players were getting plunked left and right as payback.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
MLB has yet to discipline Alex Cora for his role in the cheating scandal. The league was still investigating the Boston Red Sox for allegedly cheating during the 2018 season.
Fox News First
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox.
By entering your email and clicking the Subscribe button, you agree to the Fox News Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content and promotional communications from Fox News. You understand that you can opt-out at any time.