Remember at the beginning of this year when the big story in sports was what was going to happen in the fallout of the Houston Astros cheating scandal? It was a simpler time when people could be outraged by the prospects of a team stealing signs and signaling them to batters in the box by way of banging on trash cans — with some wild conspiracy theories that branched out from that, such as shock signals being sent to players wearing sensors on their bodies.
None of Houston’s players ended up being suspended for their actions, but manager A.J. Hinch was fired and suspended for a season and the organization faced some penalties and fines. The revenge tour other teams would go on against Houston was once considered the story of the baseball season, but being 2020 that quickly shifted to the sport trying to navigate the pandemic and, while it became something of a storyline in the postseason, it mostly fizzled away.
Still, the folks at Family Guy apparently aren’t so easily discouraged from making a joke that might be old news, as this week they took aim at the Astros in a brief non-sequitur involving a TV investigative segment on the cheating scandal that joked the culprit was simply Oscar the Grouch being on the team.
hey @astros, how much you payin’ oscar the grouch? pic.twitter.com/HTMwAzJD9T
— Family Guy (@FamilyGuyonFOX) December 7, 2020
This probably would’ve landed much better back in February or something, but you have to get your jokes off when you can and your new episodes are airing, so here we are. Astros fans are surely tired of the jokes — and in some ways I think even a lot of baseball fans have moved on — but it’s never going to fully go away and this is further evidence of that.