Dodgers Opinion: George Springer can rake in October. He also deserves every boo LA rains down on him

LOS ANGELES — The Blue Jays’ George Springer is a gifted postseason player. That much no one disputes. He’s hit 23 home runs in just under 80 playoff games and has a knack for delivering when the lights are brightest. Including his latest feat, a go-ahead homer that lifted Toronto over a heartbroken Seattle team into the World Series. But when the World Series shifts to Los Angeles next week, Dodgers fans won’t see just another clutch hitter. They’ll see the man who helped cheat them out of a title in 2017.

The boos he hears at Dodger Stadium will not come from nowhere. They will come from seven years of memory, from the sound of a trash can echoing under Minute Maid Park, and from a city that still feels robbed.

MLB’s own investigation confirmed what most Dodgers players suspected even during that Fall Classic: the Houston Astros used a camera in center field to steal opposing catchers’ signs, then relayed that information to hitters through banging noises in the dugout tunnel. Commissioner Rob Manfred’s report laid it out plainly. The system was elaborate, it was illegal, and it continued through the 2017 postseason. The Astros kept the championship, and their players were given immunity in exchange for cooperating. Not one of them faced suspension.

Even journalists who have praised Springer’s leadership have refused to look away from that history. Writing for the Toronto Star when Springer signed with the Blue Jays in 2021, columnist Mike Wilner reminded local readers that “Springer’s Houston Astros were the biggest bunch of cheaters in pro sports in nearly a century.” He called it “the most brazen cheating scheme in professional sports since the 1919 Chicago Black Sox.” And that’s from one of their guys, not some LA blogger like me.

Springer, to his credit, has sometimes shown more awareness than his former teammates. During the Astros’ 2020 spring training news conference, he said, “I feel horrible for our sport, our fans, our city, our organization — just fans in general. I regret everything.” The words sounded spontaneous, unlike the short, lawyer-approved statements from Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman that same day. Yet as Wilner pointed out, Springer still stopped short of a true apology. There was regret, but not ownership. Yeah, you feel horrible, George. Didn’t give that World Series ring back, though, did you?

When asked about the scandal after arriving in Toronto, Springer mostly brushed it off. “I believe in myself and I believe in my performances,” he told reporters. “I think this is about the Blue Jays now.” His numbers since 2017 suggest he never needed a trash can to hit in the first place, but the fact remains that he benefited from one in the most consequential October of his life. He was the World Series MVP that year. He was the face of the Astros’ celebration. And that ring still shines in every highlight reel that omits how it was won.

FanSided writer Mark Powell summed it up this week: Springer’s playoff heroics don’t erase the trash-can era, and he will “be greeted accordingly at Chavez Ravine.” Powell noted that “no one has forgiven Springer and the Astros, not even their counterparts.” He also quoted former Dodger Cody Bellinger, who said at the time, “Everyone knows they stole the ring from us.” 2016 World Series champ Kris Bryant went even further, calling the Astros’ apology “sad” and “insincere.” Nothing about that anger has faded here.

Springer’s supporters like to point out that he was only one member of a team culture run amok. True, he didn’t design the camera feed or invent the code. But he swung with the benefit of knowing what pitch was coming, and that’s enough to forever stain the result. In baseball, no advantage is more sacred than surprise. Once it’s gone, the game becomes something else entirely.

For Dodgers fans, that “something else” was Game 7 at Dodger Stadium, a night that ended not in champagne but in disbelief. Clayton Kershaw later said the loss haunted him for years. Justin Turner called it “a gut punch that doesn’t go away.” They had every reason to think they’d earned a fair fight. They didn’t get one.

That’s why this World Series meeting feels personal. Springer may now wear Toronto blue, not Houston orange, but the uniform change doesn’t erase the past. Every time he steps into the box at Chavez Ravine, the crowd will remember the sound. They’ll remember the slow unraveling of that 2017 series, the way the Astros seemed to never miss a breaking ball, the way every Dodger pitch called for a fastball seemed doomed from the start.

Springer has said the right things in spurts. He told The Athletic in 2020 that “we were all responsible.” It’s a step toward accountability, but accountability doesn’t mean immunity from consequence. Fans aren’t bound by Rob Manfred’s deals. They can deliver their verdict one chorus at a time.

And let’s be clear: the boos aren’t just for Springer. They’re for the system that let players skate while others lost jobs and reputations. They’re for every pitcher who got sent down after being lit up in Houston. They’re for former Dodger Mike Bolsinger, who never pitched in the majors again after giving up four runs (oddly enough while pitching for Toronto) to that 2017 lineup and later filed a lawsuit claiming the Astros’ cheating altered his career. They’re for the idea that cheating could be explained away as “just part of the culture.”

Springer’s numbers since leaving Houston have proved he’s still a great player without the noise. But in Los Angeles, greatness isn’t the question. Integrity is.

Dodger fans aren’t likely to throw trash cans onto the field anymore; they don’t need to. Their voices will do the work. It’s not cruelty. It’s memory, collective and justified. It’s a fan base that has waited eight years to look one of the central figures in that scandal in the eye and say, “We haven’t forgotten.”

Some will argue that it’s time to move on. They’ll say that the Dodgers have since won their own titles in 2020 and 2024, that baseball has evolved, that the sign-stealing scandal belongs to history. But history doesn’t vanish when the calendar flips. It stays alive in the stories fans tell their kids and the emotions that bubble up when a cheater returns to the scene of the crime.

If Springer homers this week, respect the swing. He’s earned that. But remember the circumstances that made him a household name in the first place. And if he strikes out, let the noise rise from the Top Deck to the field level until it drowns out the ghosts of 2017.

The Astros’ championship banner still hangs in Houston, but in Los Angeles it hangs like an asterisk. Springer was the MVP of that series, and for Dodger fans, he’s still the face of the fraud.

He will hear it in Games 3, 4, and 5. He should. And when the Dodgers take the field, may the only banging that echoes through Chavez Ravine be the sound of bats meeting balls the honest way.

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