Frankly I think it should be a crime to cheat—make the people have something to lose that hurts more than money.
Now look, I'm not anti baseball, I'm not here to yuck your yum or say something shouldn't exist because I don't value or appreciate it. But professional baseball not existing anymore sure seems like a problem solely for the people who care about baseball to figure out, not the federal government.
And yet, we still arrest for public urination.
I guess I don't see the big deal about sign stealing. I mean, in some sports, maybe stock car racing or something like that, this kind of thing would be totally encouraged. Squeaky clean compared to doping and what not.
However, cheating to win still takes something away from the game. But fundamentally, any sport is based on the principle of a level playing field... that everyone is playing by the same rules. This isn't a case where they stretched the rules, or went right up to the line -- they gained an undeniable advantage using tools that the other teams didn't have. When the batter know the pitch that's coming, you take the most competitive aspect of baseball away.
For my money, baseball teams should pursue simple encryption schemes where the sign thrown has to be decoded by the pitcher in his head, using as additional parameters the inning, batter, and a special private key agreed upon by the pitcher and catcher before each game.
It's using electronics to steal signs that is against the rules. It's because electronics basically allow you to "perfectly" steal signs, and one of the biggest things in baseball is that the batter doesn't know what the pitcher is about to throw.
Sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22416698 said it much better than me.
I never had a problem with Lance Armstrong cheating because I assumed everyone else near the top of the pack was also cheating. If everyone cheats, it is absolutely still an earnest competition. Lots of other guys probably took just as many steroids as Barry Bonds did and didn't hit anywhere near as many home runs.
I also think that there need to be rules that are enforced, because there's no game without rules, but the rules are always inherently arbitrary, and I've never felt the urge to heap moral blame on the cheaters in addition to whatever punishment they get for breaking the rules... I guess I sort of unconsciously took the position that as long as no one is getting like, physically injured, bending the rules as far as they'll go (and breaking them sometimes) is just part of the game, and penalties are penalties.
It's hard for me to see much of a distinction between taking strategic fouls and violating the rules in other ways, weighing the likelihood of getting caught against the potential gain.
Despite all of this, I don't cheat when I play sports nor would I teach my kids to cheat, but when millions of dollars are on the line (maybe because there are millions of dollars on the line), it doesn't bother me that anyone would try to gain any possible advantage.
Why is the answer to everything "throw them in jail", at a huge cost to taxpayers?