FBI Investigating St. Louis Cardinals

By Peyton Wesner

The St. Louis Cardinals are the second most successful franchise in the history of baseball behind the New York Yankees as they have captured eleven World Series crowns and a plethora of National League pennants. So far this season, Mike Matheny's club is off to the superb start of 42-21 with a five and a half game lead over the teams with the second best record, the Kansas City Royals and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The problem has never been on the diamond for St. Louis, but today an off the field issue has surfaced that could shread the integrity of the organization forever. 

Today, Tuesday, June 16, the FBI has started an investiagtion to find if the Cardinals illegally hacked into computer networks of the Houston Astros with the purpose of stealing classified information. Reports have recently surfaced that the FBI as well as Justice Department officials have evidence that St. Louis tapped into Houston's database for statistics and scouting reports to go along with the Astros' personal opinions of certain players. But how? It is believed that the Cardinals were able to access the files by using a list of passwords in relation to current Astros' General Manager Jeff Luhnow, who worked for the Cardinals from 2003 until 2011.

This morning Major League Basebal issued the following statement: 

“Major League Baseball has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database.  Once the investigative process has been completed by federal law enforcement officials, we will evaluate the next steps and will make decisions promptly.”

As of now, both the Cardinals and Major League Baseball have been handed subpoenas, but nothing more. If officials from the Cardinals' organization had orders to infiltrate Houston's computer database from higher positioned employees, this could be one of the biggest scandals baseball has ever experienced.