The process in the case against former MLB Cardinals Scouting Dir Chris Correa for allegedly hacking the Astros' computer system "could play out long enough" that the team's '16 Draft "will not be impacted," according to a source cited by Buster Olney of ESPN.com. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred "has demonstrated a deliberate administrative style in the handling of discipline cases." He wants to "make sure MLB investigators can explore as many avenues as possible and gather as much information as possible before a decision is rendered" (ESPN.com, 4/28).
CULTURE CLUB: ESPN's Jayson Stark wrote Nationals RF Bryce Harper is MLB's "most magnetic player." He is the "Gen. George S. Patton of the baseball culture war." He "sees what the men around him don't," and he says "what the men around him won't." So he is "willing to fight to save the world." When he wore his "Make Baseball Fun Again" cap three weeks ago, it "had nothing to do with marketing." He was a "man with a message," and he is "going to make sure we all hear that message for, like, the next two decades." Harper: "I love this game more than anything in the entire world." Stark wrote if baseball is "ever going to connect with its lost generation, Harper's generation, it has to cross this line, turn its back on the stoicism of the previous century and allow for the personal freedoms that other sports allow and encourage" (ESPN.com, 4/28).
