Letters to the Editor: The cheating Astros deserve to lose much more than their coach and general manager

To the editor: Major League Baseball needs to hit the Houston Astros much harder for the electronic sign-stealing scheme they ran during their 2017 World Series championship season and in 2018. Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora should be banned for life, since he did this at Houston as bench coach in 2017 and, allegedly, again in Boston.

It turns out that the Dodgers lost two World Series to two clubs that cheated. The National Collegiate Athletic Assn. would call this “lack of institutional control,” and if it can suspend Penn State and USC from the postseason, baseball ought to do the same to these teams.

Furthermore, force the Red Sox and Astros owners to sell their teams. Their inability to keep a leash on their players and coaches makes them unfit as owners. Without that, we can never trust a win by either club again.

Tom Elias, Santa Monica

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To the editor: The cheat culture of President Trump now includes even the great American pastime. The 2017 World Series title won by the cheating Astros should be vacated.

Is there no corner of American society that hasn’t turned to immoral “wins” at any cost? It’s a mandate championed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who also “won” a Supreme Court majority by cheating Judge Merrick Garland out of an up-or-down vote for Supreme Court justice.

Alex Downs, Long Beach

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To the editor: Why isn’t stripping Houston of its ill-gotten 2017 World Series title entirely appropriate? Who in our society gets to keep what they stole after they’ve been caught?

What’s the next generation of girls and boys to think, especially as technology becomes more ubiquitous, if adults aren’t crystal clear about the consequences of cheating?

Lastly, shouldn’t the victims, the Dodgers in this case, be compensated in some way? Maybe give them the draft picks that Houston forfeited.

Brad Kern, Pacific Palisades