9 episodes

The Edge follows best-selling Astroball author Ben Reiter as he investigates the cheating scandal that tarnished the Houston Astros’ World Series 2017 win. Through original interviews with key figures in the scandal, Reiter gets to the bottom of what happened, who’s to blame, and why the scandal enraged the sports world more than any other in recent memory. He also answers the biggest question of all: What drove the most forward-thinking organization in the history of sports not just to the edge … but over it?
The Edge is an Audacy original presented in partnership with Ben Reiter and Prologue Projects.

The Edge: Houston Astros Audacy

    • Sport
    • 4.8 • 24 Ratings

The Edge follows best-selling Astroball author Ben Reiter as he investigates the cheating scandal that tarnished the Houston Astros’ World Series 2017 win. Through original interviews with key figures in the scandal, Reiter gets to the bottom of what happened, who’s to blame, and why the scandal enraged the sports world more than any other in recent memory. He also answers the biggest question of all: What drove the most forward-thinking organization in the history of sports not just to the edge … but over it?
The Edge is an Audacy original presented in partnership with Ben Reiter and Prologue Projects.

    Ep 1: Bang Bang

    Ep 1: Bang Bang

    The Houston Astros were the worst baseball team in half a century. But when Ben Reiter wrote about the club for Sports Illustrated in 2014, he came to believe that they would soon be champions. In fact, he predicted on the cover of the magazine that they would win the 2017 World Series. Then they actually did, and Reiter wrote a bestselling book about their novel strategies and earned a new nickname: Astrodamus. But there was one thing Reiter hadn’t predicted or known about, a secret that wouldn’t come to light until two years later.

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    • 49 min
    Ep 2: Stargazers

    Ep 2: Stargazers

    Houston’s first great sports innovator was named Judge Roy Hofheinz. He brought the Astros to town in the 1960s with the promise of what would become known as the Eighth Wonder of the World: the Astrodome, the first ever domed stadium. But there was one thing the Judge couldn’t build: a championship team. That task fell to Hofheinz’s modern successor, Jeff Luhnow, who applied the disruptive, data-driven techniques he’d learned in the business and tech worlds… with controversial results.

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    • 52 min
    Ep 3: Smart Guys

    Ep 3: Smart Guys

    One of baseball’s unofficial slogans? “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.” Baseball's history of sign stealing is almost as old as the sport itself. Players have always gone to great lengths to decipher the non-verbal signals that opponents use to communicate on the field: using buried buzzers, military-grade telescopes, even cameras. In 2017, a respected veteran named Carlos Beltran joined the Houston Astros. Aided by the powerful, and largely unregulated, new technologies he had at his disposal, Beltran led the Astros to their long awaited championship – even as defeated rivals, like the Dodgers’ Chase Utley, harbored suspicions about how they’d done it. 

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    • 45 min
    Ep 4: Thank God We Got Osuna

    Ep 4: Thank God We Got Osuna

    The 2018 Astros were even more talented than the previous season’s champions. There was just one problem: they couldn’t count on their closer. The good news? There was a great one, named Roberto Osuna, available on the trade market – but Osuna had been suspended for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend. While many clubs wouldn’t even consider bringing him on, Jeff Luhnow’s Astros swooped in. It was the moment when many realized just how far the Astros would go to find a winning edge. And it was a seed that would metastasize into something deeply destructive: a shocking clubhouse incident that made the formerly lovable underdogs a target to be taken down.

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    • 52 min
    Ep 5: The Storm

    Ep 5: The Storm

    The revelation of the Astros’ trash can-banging, sign-stealing scheme ignited a firestorm. Players emerged to say that they’d known the Astros had been up to something – like Danny Farquhar, a former White Sox reliever who’d been the first to detect suspiciously-timed sounds from Houston’s dugout. But the scandal really accelerated on the internet, where amateur sleuths like Tony Adams scoured video evidence to figure out what exactly the Astros had done. Adams’s work allowed statisticians to analyze the impact of the Astros’ scheme – and to arrive at some surprising conclusions.

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    • 49 min
    Ep 6, Part 1: Codebreaker

    Ep 6, Part 1: Codebreaker

    After an intensive investigation, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred issued his report about the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal and punishments for some of its key figures. G.M. Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch received year-long suspensions, and were quickly fired by the Astros. But did the right people face consequences? In part 1 of our season finale, Luhnow breaks his silence about who knew what and when they knew it - and reveals that the Astros’ scheme extended beyond trash can banging.

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    • 50 min

Customer Reviews

4.8 out of 5
24 Ratings

24 Ratings

james in oxford ,

Outstanding! Really well told as a human story.

I grew up watching baseball but can’t say I’ve watched a game in a decade. This show is BRILLIANT. The story is really deftly told by an embedded journalist who doesn’t make too much of his own substantial role in the story.

It looks at the organisational culture and personalities of the corrupt club and the MLB, as well as fascinating human stories of those affected by it. So we’ll judged and balanced. The beginning of the last episode, with its detour into Wall St culture was such a nice touch.

GCTLewis ,

I’m a baseball neophyte and loved this pod

I’m a British NFL fan and previously have always been indifferent to baseball. My limited knowledge of the game had been gleaned from the odd segments I caught on PTI whilst waiting for the American Football news.

The Astros scandal caught my attention though. A world champion team had been stealing other teams signals and relayed them by bashing a dustbin (trashcan)??

I was intrigued but couldn’t make much sense of it.

I then heard this pod being promoted on the GM Shuffle and thought I’d give it a try, but I suspected it would go over my head.

This wasn’t the case and I was immediately gripped.

They pitched it perfectly (no pun intended) as a newbie like me could grasp the basics of baseball from their concise explanations, and without feeling patronised or getting bogged down in detail.

Full of human drama, with lots of twists and turns, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Ironically, the Astros scandal has kind of made me interested in baseball for the first time! I might even become an actual fan? Maybe even support the Astros?? No, that’s going too far, right???

rosiedimont ,

Great insight

This podcast is well researched and comes across as objective reporting.

As a Dodgers fan, it gives some comfort to understanding what led the Astros to cheat (even though the question of them cheating in the WS is largely left inconclusive thus far).

As a baseball fan it’s an immensely fascinating insight as to what went on in the Astros organisation and the lack of regulation around sign stealing in general. The context is important to understand the deeper implications of what happened. Ben Reiter offers that detail and an excellent commentary that is keeping me gripped.

Excited to hear what’s next.

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