You’d like to think that competing professionals would operate ethically, within the bounds of propriety as well as the written rules. But that’s not true in the field of journalism, or politics, or professional sports; there always have been and always will be those willing to trade shards or whole slices of integrity for an advantage. In baseball, this is what happened with doctored baseballs, with corked bats, with teams taking liberties with domestic and international scouting and signings, and most notably, in the steroids era.
Ignoring those lessons of history is the mistake that commissioner Rob Manfred made as the growing problem of electronics in sign stealing emerged. As one manager said recently, the first domino of this fell when MLB implemented instant replay. Rather than stationing a fifth umpire or some sort of independent arbiter to deal with each questionable decision, MLB decided to bestow challenges on each manager, and along with that came the installation of video replay systems close to each dugout. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, that was like handing a bag of fireworks to a teenager; we all probably should have anticipated the falling dominoes that followed.