It’s said to be true, so true that the FBI is indeed looking into the possibility that the St. Louis Cardinals broke into the system that former employee Jeff Luhnow created as GM of the Houston Astros.  With the Astros, he began assembling baseball minds and throwing all of the ideas and discussions into a giant database and network that they dubbed “Ground Control.”

It’s known that teams generally seek out information from other teams as ways to get ahead however they can, be it from scouts or other players or other managers or employees.  Whatever it takes is typically the mantra or motto that is used to get the job done.  I mean it’s all about the “W” right?  You gotta do what it takes right?

I keep seeing stories on Deadspin and in sports websites but I am missing the serious-ness of this story, while it may not be that people’s personally identifiable information (PII) got swiped, someone if true, actually hacked into another network on American soul.  Just this past January, President Obama talked about the possibility of putting away computer hackers, granted that was foreign computer hackers but the government is taking this seriously.  I know it’s not the same but look at all the time that Ross Ulbricht got for being convicted of running the Silk Road (life without parole in Federal prison).

I don’t know if whoever did this thought this whole thing through.  The process of hacking a computer system while it may sound like a good idea and easy to get away with; it’s not.  The FBI and other federal agencies don’t play around with electronic intrustions and they are going to make an example of whoever did this.  Especially considering this happened in the sports world and there’s never been a documented case of it happening before, so it’s going to pop off even more.

This has to be stopped now, or can you imagine teams hiring hackers to send phishing emails to teams to backdoor their ways into rivals’ networks?  The day of the draft other teams would be viewing internal emails and know what they would be able to trade for?  If this is already happening, how do we know it isn’t already happening?  Are we sure?  I mean it is one case here, but how was it found?  We know it’s going on because 10 months ago information was leaked onto Deadspin.  So that means almost a year ago at least a hacker was inside the Houston Astros’ Ground Control” network which I’m guessing is inside the teams’ internal network.

We know the espionage has already begun on a national level and in entertainment with Sony but now we are seeing it with sports.  I wouldn’t doubt it that teams have somehow tried to contact hackers on the down low in order to get some sort of extra advantage because you have to get the “W” to get the $.  But where does it end?  If you are good enough to get in and get out quick enough you don’t get caught and no one is the wiser.  It’s an interesting gamble, but in sports isn’t everything?