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A few years ago, I was tricked into covering a Jays-Astros series in Houston in August.

I say “tricked” because no one had explained to me exactly how wretched the experience would be. Both teams were terrible. In summer, the city is roughly the same temperature as the surface of the sun. The downtown is a desolate wasteland with an “after the fall of man” feel.

When I mentioned to a colleague that I was planning to walk back to the hotel after a night game, a local reporter ran up and said, “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, but I cannot in good conscience allow you to do that.”

Why?

“You won’t make it.”

The Astros’ stadium is air-conditioned – apparently the only reason anyone went to the games. It certainly wasn’t for the baseball, which was atrocious.

The franchise was a lovable sad sack in the midst of a deep, years-long tank. You’d have felt sorry for it, if you weren’t busy feeling sorry for yourself.

On that basis, it’s been a remarkable turnaround. Once bad and pitiable, the Astros are now good and detestable. Right now, they may be the most hated team in sports.

Until this week, they were a love-to-hate sort of team, a kind of corn-pone New York Yankees. Excellent, arrogant and overstocked with swagger.

Over the summer, pitcher Justin Verlander had a reporter banned from the clubhouse. His sin? He’d repeated a “private” conversation the two had had – in quotes here because if you want to keep things private, you shouldn’t tell them to reporters. They are called reporters for a reason.

What was the private conversation about? A solar eclipse.

This kind of stuff is great for everyone involved. The club feels good because it’s done a solid for one of its superstars at no cost. Verlander feels good because he has bolstered his reputation as a misanthropic renaissance man. The reporter feels good because he has become a folk hero among his people.

That is good hate.

But where there is too much swagger, hubris inevitably follows. A lot of pro sports teams cultivate bunker thinking – it’s us geniuses in here against all the apostates and fools out there. This is especially true of front-office types who’ve never played baseball. They have something to prove.

If left unchecked or – much worse – rewarded by success, this bunker mentality morphs into contempt. For fans, for the media, for anyone who isn’t in the gang.

That’s the lens through which one might view the recent meltdown of Astros assistant general manager Brandon Taubman.

Baseball teams have two tribes – the people who play baseball and the geeks who think about baseball. Taubman, who used to work at an accounting firm and has referred to himself as a “baseball economist,” is the latter.

According to Sports Illustrated, after the Astros won the American League pennant, Taubman confronted a trio of female reporters during the locker room celebrations. He taunted them by yelling out, “Thank God we got [closer Roberto] Osuna! I’m so glad we got Osuna!” – with an expletive thrown in. He said it a few times.

Osuna was acquired in a trade from the Toronto Blue Jays while in the midst of serving a suspension related to a domestic-violence charge. One of the involved reporters had been a vocal critic of the move. It’s not hard to figure out what was going on here.

But it seemed very hard for the Houston Astros.

The team’s knee-jerk reaction was to dismiss the SI report as “an attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.”

When a few other reporters who were present piped up to back SI’s version of events, the team tried again, and didn’t manage a much better job.

Taubman released one of those greasy half-apologies that screams out “written during a conference call with our lawyers.”

“My overexuberance in support of a player has been misinterpreted as a demonstration of a regressive attitude about an important social issue,” Taubman said in part. He apologized “if anyone was offended by my actions.”

What an odd “if,” given the circumstances that made the statement necessary.

This is what happens when an organization cultivates an environment – particularly in an all-male setting – of constant war. You are always fighting – other teams, the standings, expectations and, in particular, the fifth columnists in your midst.

Anyone who isn’t with you is against you. When you are surrounded by enemies, basic decency goes out the window. All the rules of decorum collapse.

This is how a grown man becomes warped enough to believe that profanely taunting people in the workplace isn’t just okay, but heroic. He isn’t a churl and a boor. He’s an overexuberant supporter of misunderstood millionaires.

After days of dithering, the Astros took another stab at sealing off this wound by firing Taubman on Thursday. That was always happening, but that the team did it in the middle of the World Series illustrates the level of panic this has provoked. The team also apologized to the Sports Illustrated reporter.

As it turns out, Taubman made two critical mistakes during the post-ALCS celebration. The second of them was vastly overestimating his place in the gang’s hierarchy. If a player had done what he did, the Astros would have done just about anything to save him. But a wonk with a spread sheet? Those guys are a buck a dozen.

Astros GM Jeff Luhnow came out Thursday evening and attempted to seal the story off. It did not go very well. Luhnow slipped about, refusing to say who’d done what when and why the Astros had decided the best course of action was to rip a reporter.

“It was an organizational statement,” Luhnow said. “There was nobody’s name on it. There were a lot of people involved.”

Based on Luhnow’s demanour, it was clear that one of MLB’s fair-haired boys now feels in existential danger over this mess. Regardless of whether or not he survives, the reframing of Houston’s reputation is well under way.

A few people will always resent a winner. Many more actively dislike an ungracious winner. But absolutely everyone hates a bully.

That’s what the Houston Astros represent now – the team that doesn’t just want to win, but also to rub your face in it. The Astros aren’t playing baseball. They’re settling scores.

In the perfect karmic way of things, the Astros – prohibitive favourites to win the World Series – are in the midst of pooching it. They’re down 2-0 headed into Washington on Friday night. If they lose that one, it’s over.

That’ll be another reason to hate them – a sore loser is even worse than a sore winner.

The only way Houston can launder its reputation is by being seen to atone for its pride. The only way to do that is by getting bad at baseball again. People need to see the punishment before they can pardon the crime.

That would’ve happened eventually, but it’s hard not to believe this episode will quicken the decline. They built an organization around the principles of paranoia and permanent attack. It worked well for a while. But now that their forward progress has been impeded, the Astros are discovering there’s no friendly place left to retreat.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Astros won the National League pennant. In fact, they won the American League pennant.

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